KNWN (AM)

KNWN (1000 kHz) is a commercial AM radio station licensed to Seattle, Washington, and serving the Seattle metropolitan area. Owned by Lotus Communications, the station primarily airs an all-news radio format. It is the local affiliate for ABC News Radio and identifies itself as "Northwest News Radio".

KNWN is a clear-channel Class A station, broadcasting with 50,000 watts, the maximum power for American AM stations. It is non-directional by day but uses a directional antenna at night to avoid interfering with WMVP in Chicago and XEOY in Mexico City, the two other Class A stations on 1000 AM. Under favorable conditions, KNWN can be heard in the daytime from Vancouver, British Columbia, to Portland, Oregon. At night it can be heard across much of Western North America. The station's studios and offices are co-located with former sister station KOMO-TV within KOMO Plaza (formerly Fisher Plaza) in the Lower Queen Anne section of Seattle, directly across the street from the Space Needle. The transmitter is on Vashon Island, off SW 159th Street.

While KNWN primarily runs an all-news format, in the early morning on weekdays it carries two syndicated news programs from Westwood One: First Light and America in the Morning. Some midday hours feature longer-form interviews and call-ins. On weekends, some hours include shows on money, health and wine, as well as some paid brokered programming.

KNWN's programming is simulcast full-time on 97.7 MHz KNWN-FM, licensed to Oakville, Washington, as well as on several FM translator stations.

In July 1926, KNWN was founded on Harbor Island, as KGFA at 980 kHz, by two owners: Birt F. Fisher, whose lease on Seattle radio station KTCL was about to run out, and the Fisher brothers of Fisher Flouring Mills, who had been on the island since 1911. (The Fisher Brothers and Birt Fisher were not related.) In preparation for the switch to the new station, Birt Fisher changed KTCL's call sign to KOMO. In December, his lease ended, and he took the call letters with him to KGFA. KOMO's first broadcast on 980 was December 31, 1926. The studios moved to Downtown Seattle in 1927. The station also began a long-running affiliation with NBC Radio that year as well, primarily with the Red Network, but also with the short-lived West Coast NBC Orange Network from 1931 to 1933. Over the following years, KOMO's frequency would go from 980 to 1080, back to 980, down to 920, up to 970, then back to 920, and settled at 950 after the NARBA frequency shakeup in 1941.

Fisher's Blend Station bought NBC Blue Network affiliate KJR from NBC in 1941. However, the August 1941 adoption of the Federal Communications Commission's "duopoly" rule restricted licensees from operating more than one radio station in a given market, and an attempt by the Fisher family to be granted an exemption was unsuccessful. The Fishers decided to keep the superior frequency of 1000 kHz, but also keep the KOMO call letters that they had held since the 1920s. Thus, on May 6, 1944, KOMO and KJR swapped call letters, with the KOMO call sign moving from 950 kHz to the more desirable 1000 kHz. The next year KJR was sold to Birt F. Fisher, who was, as aforementioned, unrelated to the KOMO owners.

At its new frequency, KOMO began broadcasting with 50,000 watts of power from its current transmitter site on Vashon Island in 1948. New studios at the corner of Fourth and Denny, near what is now the Seattle Center, were dedicated in February 1948 and included space for an expansion into television broadcasting. The cost of the new facility exceeded $1 million.

In 1953, KOMO-TV first signed on the air on Channel 4 as an affiliate of the NBC television network. Channel 4 swapped affiliations with KING-TV in 1958 and joined the ABC television network. KOMO radio followed suit by switching to the ABC radio network the next year.