City Fresno, California Branding Kiss Country Format Country | Broadcast area Fresno, California First air date 1946 | |
Frequency 93.7 MHz
(also on HD Radio) | ||
KSKS (93.7 MHz) is a commercial FM radio station located in Fresno, California. The station is owned by Cumulus Media and it airs a country music radio format branded as "Kiss Country". Its studios are located at the Radio City building on Shaw Avenue in North Fresno and its transmitter is off Auberry Road in Meadow Lakes, California. 93.7 Kiss Country has local DJs during the day and in the evening runs the syndicated Nash Nights with Shawn Parr from Nash FM, a subsidiary of Cumulus Media.
KSKS is licensed to broadcast in the HD (digital hybrid) format. As one of the oldest FM stations in the Fresno media market, the station is considered a grandfathered superpower station. Its effective radiated power is 68,000 watts at a height above average terrain of 580 meters (1903 feet). Stations at that height in Central California should run less than 3000 watts, according to current Federal Communication Commission rules for Class B regions. But KSKS went on the air in 1946, founded before the rules were put in place.
History
KRFM were the original call letters when the station first signed on in 1946. The first owner was Paul Bartlett, a Fresno radio station pioneer. The station's studios were at the transmitter site in Meadow Lakes.
The station was acquired by the owner of AM 940 KFRE (today KFIG) and KFRE-TV (today KFSN-TV), which originally operated on VHF channel 12, later UHF channel 30. The station took the call sign KFRE-FM. All three co-owned stations were sold by Triangle Publications in 1971. Because the stations were sold to separate companies, and the owners of the AM station kept the KFRE call sign, the FM station took new call letters, KFYE, as a mostly-instrumental beautiful music outlet.
Through the 1980s, the station added more vocals as an easy listening station. In 1992, KFYE completed the transition to an adult contemporary format known as "Y-94." In the 1980s, Ray Appleton hosted "Lunchtime at the Oldies" on Y-94. Ray would go on to become a popular talk show host at 580 KMJ.
On November 16, 2006, CBS Radio announced the sale of KSKS and its other Fresno-area CBS stations to Peak Broadcasting.
On August 30, 2013, a deal was announced in which Townsquare Media would purchase Peak Broadcasting, and then immediately swap Peak's Fresno stations, including KSKS, to Cumulus Media in exchange for Cumulus' stations in Dubuque, Iowa and Poughkeepsie, New York. The deal was part of Cumulus' acquisition of Dial Global. Peak, Townsquare, and Dial Global were all controlled by Oaktree Capital Management. The sale to Cumulus was completed on November 14, 2013.