City Centennial, Colorado Branding WAY-FM Format Contemporary Christian | Broadcast area Denver, Colorado Frequency 101.9 MHz | |
First air date January 28, 1967 (as KRYT-FM) | ||
KXWA (101.9 FM) is a radio station licensed to Centennial, Colorado, United States. The station serves the Denver metropolitan area and is currently owned by the WAY-FM Network. Its studios are located in Longmont, and the transmitter is near Castle Rock.
History
The station was originally licensed to Colorado Springs as KRYT-FM, broadcasting a middle-of-the-road music format as the full time companion to daytime-only KRYT-AM 1530 (now KCMN).
Walton Stations purchased the station in 1978 and began broadcasting country music as KKCS-FM under Program Director Lee Reynolds. While in the country format, KKCS-FM was a major player in the Colorado Springs market until the station was purchased by Bustos Media for $16 million in 2005.
Bustos Media's plans were to turn 101.9 into a Denver station by changing the city of license to Centennial, Colorado, and the transmitter location to the Monument Hill area. On December 2, 2005, the station moved to a Regional Mexican format, "La Gran D," and switched call letters from KKCS-FM to KGDQ on December 8, 2005. With all those changes, 101.9 FM effectively left Colorado Springs to broadcast to the larger Denver market.
On June 9, 2008, KGDQ abandoned Regional Mexican in favor of picking up the Smooth Jazz format that was dropped several months earlier by KJCD. Bustos Media CEO Amador Bustos told AllAccess.com, "We will put our improved 101.9 FM signal to its best use, by filling an evident music vacuum in the Denver metro with Smooth Jazz programming." The call letters changed to KKHI, for "K-High," the slogan used by a previous Denver smooth jazz station, KHIH.
On April 30, 2010, it was announced on KKHI Operations Manager/Program Director Steve Hamilton's Facebook page that the current format will be moving to the station's website.
As of May 1, 2010 101.9 was sold by Bustos Media to Way-FM Communications, who then replaced the Smooth Jazz format with a Contemporary Christian format, using programming from the WAY-FM Network. The station's programming can also be heard in Northern Colorado on KCWA.