KGNC (AM)

KGNC (710 kHz) is an AM radio station in Amarillo, Texas, United States with a news/talk radio format. The station is owned by Connoisseur Media. Studios for KGNC and its partners are located in southwest Amarillo near the former Western Plaza shopping center. KGNC's programming is also broadcast on 97.5 FM by translator K248DE in Amarillo.

KGNC's transmitter site is located north of Amarillo in an unincorporated section of Potter County, and northeast of Amarillo in Carson County. KGNC operates fulltime with 10,000 watts, using different daytime and nighttime directional antennas. The station has a relatively large coverage area, due to its fairly high power and the surrounding area's good ground conductivity. The signal provides at least secondary coverage of large portions of Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and New Mexico, including such cities as Lubbock and Abilene, Texas, Clovis and Roswell, New Mexico, and Garden City, Kansas. KGNC's signal has been received during the day in the suburbs of Dallas and Oklahoma City. At night, the station has a more restrictive directional antenna, that sends most of its signal north and south, and can sometimes be heard as far west as Tucson, Arizona. KGNC's transmitting frequency of 710 AM is a United States clear-channel frequency, on which WOR in New York City and KIRO in Seattle, share Class A status. Other stations, including KGNC, on this frequency must protect the nighttime skywave signals of the Class A stations, with reduced power and/or directional signals.

KGNC is one of the stations responsible for the activation of the Emergency Alert System in the Amarillo area.

KGNC was formed in 1935, when the Amarillo Globe-News Publishing Company purchased and consolidated two existing stations, WDAG and KGRS.

Effective December 1, 1921, the Commerce Department, which regulated radio at this time, adopted regulations formally defining "broadcasting stations". The wavelength of 360 meters (833 kHz) was designated for entertainment broadcasts, while 485 meters (619 kHz) was reserved for broadcasting official weather and other government reports. Because there was only one available "entertainment" wavelength, stations in a given region had to develop timesharing agreements, to assign exclusive timeslots for broadcasting on 360 meters.

Initially call letters beginning with "W" were generally assigned to stations east of an irregular line formed by the western state borders from North Dakota south to Texas, with calls beginning with "K" going only to stations in states west of that line. In January 1923 the Mississippi River was established as the new boundary, thus after this date Texas stations generally received call letters starting with "K" instead of "W".

Amarillo's first broadcasting station was WDAG, licensed to J. Laurance Martin at 605 East Fourth Street on May 16, 1922, for operation on 360 meters. The call letters were randomly assigned from a sequential roster of available call signs.

In the late summer of 1923, WDAG was reassigned to 1140 kHz. In 1930, the owner became the National Radio and Broadcasting Company.