KTAR (AM)

KTAR (620 kHz) is an AM commercial radio station licensed to Phoenix, Arizona, United States. Owned and operated by Bonneville International, it features a sports format airing programming from ESPN Radio. The studios are located in north Phoenix near Piestewa Peak, and the station broadcasts with 5,000 watts from a transmitter site near the corner of 36th Street and Thomas Road.

KTAR was established in 1922 as KFAD, owned by the McArthur brothers, and became one of just two stations in Phoenix (alongside KOY) from the early 1920s through 1940. It was purchased by The Arizona Republican (soon renamed the Arizona Republic) in 1929 and adopted its present call sign in January 1930 as part of a major overhaul. From the 1930s for several decades, KTAR was the key NBC radio affiliate in the state. Its program director, John Howard Pyle, jumped from radio to politics and served two terms as Governor of Arizona. KTAR, which added a television station (KVAR, later KTAR-TV) in 1954 and an FM radio station in 1960, grew into one of the most important broadcasters in the state. After dropping music programming in 1973 to focus on news, talk, sports, and information, it consolidated itself as the leading station of its kind in Phoenix under the ownership of Combined Communications Corporation and Pulitzer Broadcasting; Bonneville has owned KTAR since 2004.

While KTAR primarily broadcasts network programming and live sports overflow, its local programming was spun out in two stages onto the FM band. In 2006, KTAR-FM 92.3 began airing all of KTAR's news and talk programming, and the AM station adopted a full-time sports format. KPKX (98.7 FM) was flipped from music to become KMVP-FM "Arizona Sports" in January 2014, allowing the AM station to become a full-time ESPN Radio outlet and moving local sports talk programming to FM. As Bonneville holds the radio broadcast rights to most major professional and college sports in Phoenix, KTAR carries games in the event of scheduling conflicts with KMVP-FM.

Effective December 1, 1921, the United States Department of Commerce, in charge of radio at the time, adopted a regulation formally establishing a broadcasting station category, which set aside the wavelength of 360 meters (833 kHz) for entertainment broadcasts and 485 meters (619 kHz) for farm market and weather reports. On June 21, 1922, the McArthur Brothers Mercantile Company, at 134 South Central Avenue in Phoenix, was issued a license for a new station on the shared 360-meter "entertainment" wavelength. The station's call letters, KFAD, were randomly assigned from an alphabetical roster of available call signs. KFAD was the third broadcasting station licensed in the state of Arizona and, as KTAR, is the oldest surviving one. The original station was built by Arthur Anderson, who would remain with KFAD and later KTAR until his death in 1956 and along the way claimed various Arizona radio firsts.

The KFAD call letters were first printed in The Arizona Republican in November, when the station gave radio concerts at the Arizona State Fair. By April 1923, it was described as the third-largest station in the United States west of Denver, and by 1924, KFAD was broadcasting nightly programs.

In early 1925, the station was assigned to the frequency of 1000 kHz, which was changed a short time later to 1100 kHz. That same year, ownership was changed to Electrical Equipment Company (McArthur Brothers Mercantile Company), and the station was rebuilt, with two 60-foot (18 m) towers topping the Electrical Equipment Company building at 312 North Central Avenue complete with lit "KFAD" letters. In early 1928, KFAD was reassigned to 930 kHz, a change that Phoenix radio listeners found hindered their reception of KOA in Denver and KFI in Los Angeles. On November 11, 1928, as part of a nationwide reallocation under the provisions of the Federal Radio Commission's General Order 40, the station moved to 620 kHz, which has been its assignment ever since.

On September 15, 1929, it was announced that the Arizona Republican newspaper and the Electrical Equipment Company had filed articles of incorporation creating the KAR Broadcasting Company, which intended to take over and upgrade KFAD. An initial report said the station's new call letters would eventually be "KAR"; However, earlier that year, those call letters had been assigned to a government coastal station located in the U.S. territory of the Philippines. Ownership was transferred to the new company in November 1929, and the call sign on record briefly changed to KREP, representing the newspaper ownership. The new ownership also began the process of rebuilding the station to operate with 1,000 watts during the day from the Heard Building, where the Republican was located. Instead of KREP, the new owners received permission to change the call sign to KTAR, which it began using on January 1, 1930, in advance of the new facilities being activated on February 4.

June 1930 brought about another milestone in Arizona radio history, as KTAR joined NBC on June 8 with the presentation of a multiple-hour national program, Arizona on NBC Parade. In the early 1930s, KTAR collaborated with Phoenix Union High School and the Phoenix Adult School to present the KTAR School of the Air. An article in Broadcasting magazine recognized the program's success after two years' operation, noting that, in 1932, students "were scattered in 61 Arizona cities and towns and in California, New Mexico, Utah and other adjacent areas in the southwest ... [including] many of the disabled World War veterans quartered in the veterans' hospitals at Prescott and Tucson." By 1933, KTAR was on the main Red and Blue networks from the east and NBC's west coast Orange network, giving it access to the vast majority of NBC programs.