KFBK (AM)

KFBK (1530 kHz) is a commercial AM radio station in Sacramento, California. It is simulcast on KFBK-FM 93.1 MHz. KFBK-AM-FM air a news-talk radio format and are owned by iHeartMedia, Inc. The studios and offices are on River Park Drive in North Sacramento, near the Arden Fair Mall.

KFBK is a Class A radio station. Its 50,000-watt transmitter is on Pleasant Grove Road at Catlett Road in Pleasant Grove. Because KFBK shares AM 1530 with another Class A station, WCKY in Cincinnati, KFBK uses a directional antenna, which operates with separate day and night parameters and has the highest field strength of any AM station in the United States. The daytime signal covers much of the Northern California, from the northern Sacramento Valley to the San Francisco Bay Area and the Central Valley. At night, it reaches much of the Western United States and Western Canada.

iHeart owns three talk stations in the Sacramento metropolitan area, KFBK-AM-FM, which air mostly local shows and news blocks on weekdays, and KSTE, which carries mostly syndicated conservative talk shows. Weekdays on KFBK-AM-FM begin with "The KFBK Morning News" with Cristina Mendonsa, followed by Clay Travis & Buck Sexton, Sam Shane, John McGinness and "The Afternoon News with Kitty O'Neal". At night, three syndicated shows are heard: "The Pat Walsh Show", Coast to Coast AM with George Noory and This Morning, America's First News with Gordon Deal.

Weekends feature shows on money, health, the outdoors, guns, car repair and travel, some of which are paid brokered programming. Some weekday shows are repeated on weekends. ABC News Radio begins most hours nights and weekends.

According to official government records, KFBK's first license was granted in August 1922. However, the station has in some cases included as part of its history an earlier Sacramento station, KVQ, which began broadcasting in February 1922.

KVQ received its initial license, as Sacramento's first broadcasting station, on December 9, 1921, issued to J. C. Hobrecht. It was operated in conjunction with the Sacramento Bee newspaper, and made its debut broadcast on February 2, 1922. A few months later, ownership was transferred from J. C. Hobrecht to the Bee's publisher, James McClatchy, followed a short time later by a transfer to "Sacramento Bee (James McClatchy Co.)". However, KVQ suspended operations on December 20, 1922, and was formally deleted on January 2, 1923. Early reviews in the Sacramento Bee treated KVQ as a separate station from the later KFBK, and government regulators at the time consistently considered the two to be separate, unrelated stations.

KFBK was first licensed, as the city's second broadcasting station, on August 16, 1922, to the Kimball-Upson Company, and initially was operated in conjunction with the Bee's primary competitor, the Sacramento Union. The call letters were sequentially assigned from an alphabetic list maintained by the Department of Commerce, which regulated radio in the United States at this time. KFBK began test transmissions in early September, and made its formal debut broadcast on September 17, 1922.

Initially there was only a single wavelength, 360 meters (833 kHz), available for radio station "entertainment" broadcasts, which required stations in various regions to develop timesharing agreements assigning operating hours. As of November 1, 1922, there were seven "Inland Stations" sharing time on 360 meters, with KFBK allocated 6:00 to 6:30 P.M. daily except Sunday, plus 8:00 to 9:00 P.M. Thursdays and 8:00 to 10:00 P.M. Sundays.