City St. Paul, Minnesota Branding Go 95.3 | Broadcast area Minneapolis-St. Paul Frequency 95.3 MHz | |
Slogan The Modern Hip Hop Channel First air date April 10, 1960 (as KNOF) | ||
KZGO (95.3 FM) is a Rhythmic Top 40 radio station licensed to St. Paul, Minnesota, serving the Twin Cities area. The station, known as "Go 95.3", is owned by Go Media, with sister station KQGO, through licensee Northern Lights Broadcasting, LLC. KZGO's studios are located in the Ford Building on Fifth Avenue across from Target Field (and the similarly named METRO station) in downtown Minneapolis, while its transmitter is located atop the IDS Center.
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History
KZGO was founded as KNOF by the Rev. Fred and the Rev. Grace Adam, signing on the air on April 10, 1960, to broadcast Christian programming to the greater Twin Cities media market of Minneapolis/St. Paul. Their company was named the Selby Gospel Broadcasting Corporation because the offices and studios were on Selby Avenue in St. Paul. The station's transmitter carried only 3000 watts on a 249-foot tower, while many local FM stations were powered at 100,000 watts on towers five times that height.
In August 2007, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approved the transfer of control of Selby Gospel Broadcasting to North Central University, as a gift to the college at the request of Rev. Grace Adam, an alumna of the University.
The station operated from new state of the art studios on the campus of North Central University and transmitted a 6,000 watt signal from a 249-foot tower in St. Paul, its city of license.
New ownership
KNOF was sold to Praise Broadcasting effective October 17, 2014 for $5 million. However, nearly eleven months later, on September 24, 2015, Praise Broadcasting announced the sale of KNOF to Northern Lights Broadcasting, in exchange for money, the move of the format to the HD2 sub channel of Northern Lights' KTWN, and a five-year sponsorship deal with the Minnesota Twins for "Faith Night" from 2016 to 2020 and use of Target Field for Praise FM's annual concerts in 2016 and 2017. In total, the transaction was valued at $7.95 million, and was consummated on January 4, 2016.
Speculation from media outlets had Northern Lights moving KTWN and its Alternative format to 95.3, paving the way for a new format to debut at 96.3. These rumors increased as Northern Lights requested the callsign KZGO for the station.
On January 5, 2016, at 3 PM, Northern Lights flipped the station to Rhythmic Top 40 as "Go 95.3", launching with "Crewed Up" by local hip-hop group Atmosphere, the first of 10,000 songs in a row to launch the new station. The move brought the format back to the Twin Cities for the first time since sister station KTWN (as KTTB) flipped to Top 40 in 2010. The newly launched Go 95.3 features a hybrid presentation of current Rhythmic and Urban R&B/Hip-Hop product mixed in with cutting edge music from local and independent talent that doesn't receive much exposure. The format was launched exactly one year to the minute that KTWN launched the "Go 96.3" alternative format. On January 22, 2016, KNOF changed its call sign to KZGO.