ERP 5,000 watts Facility ID 10099 Frequency 93.5 MHz Format Classic hip-hop Area Riverside, San Bernardino | HAAT -40 metres Sister stations KDAY, KWHY-TV City of license Riverside Owner Alex Meruelo Branding 93.5 KDAY | |
Broadcast area Riverside-San Bernardino, California Former callsigns KREA (1993-2000)
KNJR (2000-2001)
KFSB (2001-2003)
KZBA (2003-2004)
KDAI (2004-2007)
KWIE (2007-2009) Slogan LA's #1 for Back In The Day Hits | ||
KDEY-FM (93.5 FM, Wild 93.5) is serving the Riverside/San Bernardino area. The station is owned by Meruelo Media and broadcasts at 93.5 MHz on the FM dial. The station's city of licence is Ontario, California. KDEY-FM has a transmitter located on Haven Mountain to the north of Ontario.
From 2004 to 2008, KDEY-FM and KDAY in Redondo Beach, California were a pair of synchrocasting radio stations serving the LA/Orange County and Riverside/San Bernardino. Both stations ended their simulcast on 14 August 2008, when KDAY increased its signal coverage and began focusing on the Los Angeles area as a Urban Contemporary/Urban Talk outlet targeting 18- to 49-year-olds, while this station changed to KWIE and flipped formats to Rhythmic AC. After a year as a Rhythmic AC, KWIE returned to simulcasting KDAY on 28 September 2009 as KDEY-FM. On 1 March 2017, KDEY split from the simulcast to target the Inland Empire again as a Rhythmic Contemporary with a heavy emphasis on Hip-Hop currents.
KDEY-FM has a transmitter located in Rancho Cucamonga.
Station history
The 93.5 in Ontario was KNTF from the early 80's until 1990 when it became "Thunder Country" for a very short time. In the early 1990s, this became Hot AC KRZE, "The Breeze". Former staff members of KRZE include Steve Craig mid-days at WRXP New York, Kevin Barrett-programme director at XTRA Sports San Francisco, and Lisa Osborne-anchor at KFI News. Formerly both Torrance and Ontario stations begun in the 1950s had call signs similar to each other: KFXM(AM) in Ontario (for San Bernardino) and KFXT(AM) in Torrance (for Los Angeles).
Soon after it aired a block programming primarily purchased by Korean broadcasters. In the mid-1990s, it began simulcasting the Redondo Beach station in its various formats, first as KRZE, then KREA, KFSB, KZBA and KNJR, its full-length programming in the Korean Language, was known as "Radio Korea" until 1999, when KNJR of Ontario/KZBA of Torrance switched to Spanish language musica, known as "Radio Gruperah".
In 2004, the station became the simulcast for KDAY, offering a Hip-Hop/R&B format and took the KDAI calls to match its sister station's on-air handle. The signal was used to cover the eastern portions of Los Angeles County and the Inland Empire. Despite the effort to cover the area, it was signal challenged. In 2006 the KDAI calls were replaced with the KWIE calls. After three years of simulcasting Magic announced that KDAY would get a signal upgrade and cover more of the Los Angeles area as a Urban Contemporary/Urban Talk outlet. The move also ended the simulcast of KDAY and KWIE in August 2008, with KWIE being re-launched as "FLO 93.5."
The "FLO 93.5" approach was started by Don McCoy, CEO of Magic Broadcasting, which is headquartered in Panama City, Florida. The first 90 days of broadcasting was proposed to be commercial free. In an interview with The Press-Enterprise, station sales manager Colleen Bambrick described the new format in a telephone interview: "FLO 93.5 will be rhythmic adult contemporary....We'll play artists like Alicia Keys, Carlos Santana, Usher, maybe a Mary J. Blige."
Unfortunately, KWIE's Rhythmic AC format did not perform well in the ratings. In September 2009, KWIE dropped the format and returned to simulcasting KDAY's Classic Hip-Hop format under new call letters KDEY-FM. The latter had dropped their syndicated-heavy Urban Contemporary approach in August 2009 after it too had poor ratings.
In May 2014, KDEY and KDAY were sold to Meruelo Media, which also owns Los Angeles television station KWHY. On 7 June 2015, the stations began carrying Art Laboe's syndicated six-hour Sunday-night oldies programme, "The Art Laboe Connection," which had previously been heard on KHHT until February 2015, when the station dropped its rhythmic oldies format and switched to urban as KRRL.
On 28 February 2017 KDEY starting stunting with a loop of "Welcome to the Jungle" by Guns N' Roses, indicating a tease towards Active Rock or Classic Rock. But on 1 March 2017, KDEY flipped to R&B/Hip-Hop as "Wild 93.5," giving the Inland Empire its first Urban Contemporary outlet since 1994, when KHTI's predecessor KABE dropped the format for Alternative as KCXX. It also revived the "Wild" branding that was last used at KRQB from 2004 to 2007 when it was KWIE.