First air date October 1926 Power 50,000 watts City of license Dallas Owner CBS Radio | Language(s) English Frequency 1080 kHz Format All-news radio Branding NewsRadio 1080 | |
Broadcast area Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex Slogan When news breaks, we break in first. Audience share 2.3 (January 2017, Nielsen Audio[1]) Area Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex Sister stations KTVT, KRLD-FM, KLUV, KVIL, KTXA, KJKK, KMVK | ||
KRLD (1080 kHz "NewsRadio 1080") is a commercial AM radio station owned and operated by CBS Radio. Licensed to Dallas, KRLD serves the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex and North Texas with an All-News radio format. Unlike most CBS All-News stations which run continuous news around the clock, KRLD does not stay with the format at night. And on weekends it only carries all-news for a few hours in the morning. Weeknights, KRLD runs nationally syndicated talk shows including Dave Ramsey, Clark Howard, Texas Overnight with Charley Jones and America in The Morning. Weekends feature shows on money, home repair, real estate, travel, computers and fishing. Some weekend hours are paid brokered programming. Most hours begin with world and national news from CBS Radio News.
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The station's studios are located along North Central Expressway in Uptown Dallas, and the transmitter site is near Saturn Road in Garland, Texas. KRLD (AM) broadcasts in the HD Radio format and can also be heard on KRLD-FM 105.3 HD2. KRLD is a Class A station broadcasting at 50,000 watts, the maximum power allowed for American AM stations. By day, KRLD uses a non-directional antenna and the station is audible with a good radio from Oklahoma City to Austin. At night, KRLD must use a directional antenna nulled slightly away from the northeast to avoid interfering with WTIC Hartford, the other Class A station on AM 1080. KRLD's nighttime signal is heard over much of the central United States and parts of Mexico.
Station history
KRLD first signed on in October of 1926. At first it was on the air for six hours each day, except on Wednesdays when the station closed down to make repairs and recharge the batteries. The call sign came from the founding owner and his company: Edwin Kiest Radio Laboratories of Dallas. Since 1939, KRLD has broadcast at a power of 50,000 watts, the highest allowed by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). In the summer of 1941, KRLD moved to 1080 on the AM dial. During the Golden Age of Radio, KRLD carried network programming, including dramas, comedies, game shows, soap operas and big band music.
For most of the 1960s and 70s, KRLD ran blocks of different local programming, including Middle of the Road and Country music, with some news and talk. In April 1978, KRLD switched from a music-based format to become the third news and information station in Dallas/Fort Worth. WRR 1310 AM (now KTCK) carried an all-news format starting in 1975, until its 1978 sale to Bonneville International. From 1976 to 1978, AM 1540 KRXV Fort Worth (today KZMP) carried the NBC Radio News and Information Service as an all-news outlet.
KRLD originally broadcast from the Adolphus Hotel in Dallas and for a time had its main studios in Arlington, Texas at Ameriquest Field, now known as Globe Life Park in Arlington. In the summer of 2005, the station moved operations to a 5th floor office at the southwest corner of North Fitzhugh Avenue and Central Expressway in Dallas.
KRLD achieved several firsts in the field of radio broadcasting:
History books dispute whether KRLD, KDKA Pittsburgh or WEAF New York (today WFAN) was the first station to broadcast commercial announcements on radio.
Branch Davidian leader David Koresh used KRLD to broadcast his messages in 1993 during his standoff with the government and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, near Waco, Texas.
During the 1970s and 1980s, KRLD was the flagship station for the NFL's Dallas Cowboys, with Brad Sham providing color analysis and later play-by-play. (Sham continues as the Cowboys' lead voice, though the team's games now air on sister station KRLD-FM.) Beginning in 1995, KRLD served as the radio flagship of baseball's Texas Rangers. In 2009, weekday games moved from KRLD to KRLD-FM. KRLD would relinquish the Rangers' English language radio rights in 2011 to competitor 103.3 KESN. Rangers broadcasts would return to KRLD-FM in 2015 with broadcasts moving over to KRLD (AM) when conflicting with other programming, such as Cowboy games, on the FM channel.
Over the last several decades, KRLD has gone between being an All-News station and a Talk station. On September 27, 2010, KRLD began broadcasting continuous news from 5am-8pm on weekdays, as well as weekend mornings, with talk programming on nights and most of the weekend.
Honors
The Radio Television Digital News Association announced on June 12, 2013, that the KRLD Afternoon News had been chosen as the recipient of the prestigious 2013 National Edward R. Murrow Award for Best Newscast in the Large Market Radio category.
Texas State Network
KRLD has long served as the flagship station for the Texas State Network, which provides KRLD and other stations around the state with news, sports and weather info. Some reporters are based at the KRLD studios, with others at the state capital in Austin and other parts of Texas.