AM Radio Stations in the Los Angeles Area

Photo courtesy of Kaboompics.com.

Radio broadcasting comes to Los Angeles in 1922 with stations KHJ, KFI and KNX.

Also: FM Radio Stations in the Los Angeles Area
and Most Popular Radio Stations in the Los Angeles Area

By Call Letters (Directory by Dial Location Follows)

See stations by dial location in table below.

Directory (in order by Dial Location)

(1) Broadcasts in Antelope Valley (Northern Los Angeles County).
(2) Broadcasts in Santa Clarita Valley area of Los Angeles County.

Also visit: LA Radio

AM News radio station KNX is one of the oldest stations in the nation. Under the call letters KGC, it received its first formal broadcasting license on December 8, 1921. The station can even trace its origin to an earlier amateur station, 6ADZ, started by Fred Christian on September 10, 1920.

First licensed on March 10, 1922, as KJS, the 1330 kHz frequency (AM) is also one of the oldest radio stations in the nation. It is also the one of the oldest Spanish-language radio stations in the nation.

According to a Neilson Audio survey in 2019, about 66% of working adults in the Los Angeles metropolitan area listen to radio each day. About 70% of people in the Los Angeles metropolitan area listen to radio during the afternoon drive every week.

According to a Neilson Audio survey in 2018, Spanish language radio drew more than 4.6 million different listeners in the course of a week, or about 45 percent of the radio-listening audience in the Los Angeles metropolitan area.

During the summer of 2021, radio station KRTH-FM (101.1) has held the leading position with the largest share of radio listeners in the Los Angeles area. Spanish language music station KLVE-FM (107.5) was the leading Spanish language station and KFI-AM (640) the leading news/talk station. Stations are measured in "cumulative audience," or total number of unique listeners who tune in for at least five minutes per week. This number can approach nearly 4 million listeners.

In 2017, Radio Disney on 1110 AM changed their format from pop music for children to country music. The children's pop format continues to be broadcast only on KRTH's 101.1 FM HD2, but only through HD radios. Disney also broadcasts thier KRDC signal through K256CX FM on 99.1 FM, but, currently, the signal only reaches the Irwindale area.

KAVL AM has been continuously broadcasting Los Angeles Dodgers games since 1958.

The John and Ken Show on KFI AM 640 is the most listened-to local radio talk show in the nation. In the peak hour of their daily broadcasts, they draw an audience of about one million listeners. John Kobylt and Ken Chiampou began broadcasting in Los Angeles in 1992, coming from New Jersey and New York.

In 1971, then Los Angeles International Airport manager Clifton Moore came up with an idea for a radio station that would broadcast airport traffic information for visitors to LAX. He thought it would help relieve growing airport traffic congestion. Radio engineers William S. Halstead and Richard W. Burden were brought in to put the project together. By 1972, the new station began broadcasting in the immediate LAX area on AM frequency 840. It quickly became apparent that early 1970s drivers still had to find radio stations on a “slide dial" which distracted them from driving. Halstead and Burden found that car radios could actually tune into radio frequency 530 at the very “bottom of the dial.” Such a station frequency could easily be located on the radio dial without actually having to look at the dial. The new station switched to AM 530 and came to be known as LAX Air Radio 530. The station, which eventually could be heard as far away as 30 miles from the airport, broadcast continuously until 2011. By then, the contract with the vendor that managed the station expired and the airport decided not to fund the station any longer.