City Brawley, California First air date November 1946 | Frequency 1300 kHz Format Country music | |
Broadcast area Imperial County, California Slogan Imperial Valley's All American Country (KROP) | ||
KROP (1300 AM) is a radio station that broadcasts from Brawley, California. Licensed in the city of Brawley, California, United States, it serves the Imperial Valley, California, area. The station is owned by LarDog Communications, LLC.
History
The station first went on the air in November 1946 and was a CBS Radio affiliate. KROP had a music format from the 1950s to the early 1980s, when it switched to a news/talk format. In 1995, it switched to a country music format. This lasted until 1998, when the station became KKSC, "ESPN 1300", a sports talk station affiliated with ESPN Radio. Though the station's audience grew with the sports format, KKSC had trouble selling the format to advertisers, rendering the station dependent on the profits of sister station KSIQ. Commonwealth Communications purchased the station from Stodelle Broadcasting in 1999; two years later, the station changed back to KROP and began playing a classic country format provided by ABC Radio (now Citadel Media)'s Real Country service. Cherry Creek Radio bought the station in 2003. In 2010, LarDog Communications, LLC. purchased KROP, installed new state of the art broadcasting equipment and changed the format to talk radio.
After KSIQ was moved into the San Diego market, Cherry Creek Radio shut down KROP in April 2010, as the lack of an FM sister station made it more difficult for the station to compete in the Imperial Valley market. The station was sold, and returned on the air when the sale was completed in August 2010. Brawley Wildcat Football was broadcast via the World Wide Web.
On August 1, 2014, KROP switched format to country music, citing low advertising revenues for the talk radio format.