KKLQ (FM)

KKLQ (100.3 MHz, "Positive, Encouraging 100.3") is a non-commercial FM radio station owned by Educational Media Foundation (EMF) and carries the Christian adult contemporary format of its nationally syndicated network K-Love throughout the Greater Los Angeles area. Licensed to Los Angeles, California, KKLQ's transmitter is located atop Mount Wilson and has a booster in Santa Clarita, KKLQ-FM2 at 100.3 MHz, to extend its coverage into the Santa Clarita Valley and other areas north of Los Angeles.

From 2008 to 2017, the station broadcast a classic rock format (though it initially aired an adult album alternative format) under the brand 100.3 The Sound as KSWD. In 2017, station owner Entercom announced its merger with CBS Radio. In order to satisfy Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ownership caps, Entercom retained CBS Radio's pre-existing Los Angeles cluster but divested KSWD to EMF, who assumed control of the station on November 16, 2017, and flipped it to K-Love programming. The former broadcast studios of The Sound were located on Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile district of Los Angeles.

KKLQ is not affiliated with KLVE, a Spanish-language radio station which has used the name "K-Love" in the Los Angeles market continuously since 1974 and holds the trademark locally. Prior to assuming control of KKLQ, EMF reached an agreement with Univision Radio (now known as Uforia Audio Network), owner of KLVE, that allows KKLQ to use the K-Love brand on-air as part of networked content, but requires local promotion to disambiguate itself from KLVE.

100.3 FM in Los Angeles signed on as KMLA at 8 a.m. on July 1, 1957. The station broadcast good music and news, with no more than two commercials per half-hour. (KMLA is now a Regional Mexican-formatted station in El Rio, California, serving the Oxnard-Ventura radio market.)

The KMLA Broadcasting Corporation, the original owner of the station, filed to sell it to KFOX, Inc., owner of KFOX (1280 AM) in Long Beach, in November 1964. The station changed its call letters to KVXN in January and again in April, after the sale was completed, to KFOX-FM, at which time it began simulcasting KFOX's country music format.

In 1972, KFOX, Inc. traded its two Los Angeles stations and $3.45 million to the Industrial Broadcasting Company in exchange for KIKK AM and -FM in Pasadena, Texas, near Houston. Industrial then split the KFOX stations apart; the AM went to the John Walton group, while KFOX-FM was sold to Cosmic Communications. The new ownership changed the FM station's call letters to KIQQ ("K-100") in an attempt to capitalize on its frequency of 100.3 MHz. The following year, with the station's soft rock format failing to gain ratings or billing, KIQQ brought in deposed KHJ heavyweights Bill Drake and Gene Chenault, who contracted to program and manage the station. In spite of bringing in former KHJ powerhouse jocks, including Robert W. Morgan and The Real Don Steele, certain management and programming decisions are believed to have led to the demise of Drake-Chenault's run at KIQQ. By 1975, Morgan and Steele were gone. Ultimately, the station cut costs drastically by airing a generic national format via satellite.

In the early 1980s, the station dropped its K-100 handle and kept to the calls as "KIQQ" with a live and local aggressive top-40 or contemporary hit radio (CHR) format. The on-air lineup included Jeff Thomas, G.W. McCoy (engaged to actress Heather Locklear for a time), and Francesca Cappucci. "Play Hits for Cash" was a regular promotion. KIQQ simulcast the NBC television show Friday Night Videos and even had Wally George as a weekend call-in host. KIQQ also carried American Top 40 beginning in 1983 after competing CHR station KIIS-FM lost the countdown program over the playing of network commercials; this move forced KIIS-FM to create its own chart show, Rick Dees Weekly Top 40.

By the mid-1980s, CHR competition from KIIS-FM, KKHR, and KBZT proved too intense for KIQQ; KIIS-FM alone had a 10 share in the Arbitron book. On July 29, 1985, KIQQ flipped to a satellite-delivered adult contemporary format as "100.3 K-Lite". The format lasted for four years before the launch of another new format.