Neha Patil (Editor)

KGMI

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Broadcast area
  
Whatcom County

Class
  
B

City of license
  
Bellingham

Branding
  
KGMI News/Talk 790

Slogan
  
News Talk Radio

Frequency
  
790 kHz

Owner
  
Saga Communications

Sister stations
  
KPUG, KAFE, KISM, KBAI

KGMI playerliquidcompassnetKGMIAML500

Translator(s)
  
96.5 K243BX (Bellingham)

First air date
  
1926 (as KVOS, in Seattle; moved to Bellingham in 1927)

Power
  
5,000 watts (day)1,000 watts (night)

Format
  
Talk radio, All-news radio

Area
  
Whatcom County, Washington

Kgmi pirate radio 1


KGMI (790 AM) is a radio station broadcasting a news/talk and information format. Licensed to Bellingham, Washington, the station is owned and operated by Saga Broadcasting, dba Cascade Radio Group.

Contents

KGMI serves Northwest Washington with a signal that reaches into much of southwestern British Columbia, including Vancouver and Victoria. It and also reaches into Seattle's northern suburbs, the Olympic Peninsula.

Interview with kgmi am in bellingham wa


History

KGMI signed on in 1926 from Seattle as KVOS, owned by Lou Kessler. It moved to Bellingham a year later. In 1928, Aberdeen businessman Rogan Jones bought the station.

In 1933, Jones began airing news bulletins from the Associated Press under the moniker "Newspaper of the Air." The AP obtained a restraining order, but federal judge John Clyde Bowen refused to grant a permanent injunction, saying that news reports belong to the public. Bowen's decision was reversed on appeal, prompting Jones to appeal to the Supreme Court. In 1936, the Supreme Court threw out the restraining order on the grounds that since the AP was a nonprofit organization, it couldn't incur damages. The case established that radio (and later, television) stations had the same right to news reports as newspapers.

Jones signed on the area's first television station, KVOS-TV, in 1953. He sold it in 1962, but kept the radio station, changing its call letters to the current KGMI and holding onto it until his death in 1972. The station went through several more owners before Saga purchased it.

References

KGMI Wikipedia


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