KCBQ

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Intelligent Talk 1170 KCBQ is owned by Salem Communications and offers Conservative talk such as Mike Gallagher, Dennis Prager and Michael Medved. It was formerly a country music powerhouse.

For years before that it was one of the two leading AM top 40 stations in San Diego. KCBQ began doing Top 40 in the late 1950s and continued with the format through the 1960s & 1970s with great success. Some assume the current callsign represents the Kansas City BarbeQue restaurant in San Diego, but in reality it meant CBS Quality (being that they were once affiliated with the CBS Radio Network in the 1950s.).

In 1978 the station switched to an adult contemporary format . In 1982 the station switched to Country Music. In 1985 the station went to an Oldies format.

KCBQ featured a 50,000 watt transmitter (limited to 5000 watts at night, and later, reduced to 1500 watts nighttime). The antenna was originally a six-element directional array in the city of Santee, on Mission Gorge Road, just east of Carlton Hills Blvd., northeast of downtown San Diego and north of the city of El Cajon. The antenna site was lost to urban development and is now a shopping center, anchored by a Kohl's and a Lowe's. For a time the station had to broadcast at reduced power from a temporary longwire antenna on a tower shared by KGB-FM and KLSD. According to the FCC, KCBQ's daytime power on the long wire was 5,000 watts, with power reduced after sunset to 675 watts (non-directional, both day and night). During KCBQ's tenure transmitting from KLSD/KGB's antenna, it was somewhat ironic because KLSD's progressive talk radio format competed directly against KCBQ's conservative talk radio. And there is further irony here: KLSD (as 136/KGB) and KCBQ were once before arch-rivals, as the two main top 40 radio stations during the 1960's and early 1970's radio wars in San Diego.

KCBQ received a construction permit for a five-tower array in the area north of Lakeside, not far from the old Mast Park site, and to increase power to 50,000 watts daytime; 2,900 watts nighttime. The station began to operate at the aforementioned 50,000 watts on Monday, June 4, 2007. KCBQ is now sharing antennas with KECR 910, another former AM top 40 competitor of KCBQ's in the first half of the 1960s; KECR 910 was known as Radio KDEO (pronounced "Radio kay-dee-oh") in the 1960s.

[edit] External links

• Intelligent Talk 1170 KCBQ
• San Diego, California antenna sites 2001
• San Diego, California antenna sites 2005
• Query the FCC's AM station database for KCBQ
• Radio Locator Information on KCBQ

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