How tiny radio station KCLA is calling Los Angeles from its San Pedro transmitter

KCLA has been on the air since at least 2015 — I wrote about it right here that year, though at the time it was more of a placeholder … a one-watt transmitter located somewhere on the Palos Verdes peninsula to make it legal for the FCC.

But now the station is getting some street cred, due to a relocated transmitter, higher power, and a presence on social media. KCLA — originally slated to be a talk station with the call-letters meaning “Calling Los Angeles,” it has luckily (and hopefully permanently) morphed into a format currently playing a wide variety of what might be called “adult album alternative” music.

According to information provided by Radio.Locator.com and confirmed by a local engineer, the transmitter is now located on top of the Brown Brothers building in downtown San Pedro, broadcasting with an effective radiated power of 50 watts. While that may not sound like much, and it is half of what the license permits,  it covers the target area quite well.

Driving around San Pedro near downtown and around San Pedro High, for example, it comes in great. Go to Western Avenue near Dodson Jr. High and the signal from the formerly great KFMB-FM (now KFBG) on the same frequency out of San Diego interferes too much with the KCLA. At least in the car … with a non-moving radio and especially with a house antenna that can be moved around, you can still pick up KCLA even there.

Reception, ironically, improves on bad weather days when the atmosphere blocks out the KFBG signal and lets KCLA spread out a bit. In the future, an online stream will take care of the fringe reception problem … and let it be heard across the globe.

For now, the station is basically a jukebox: noncommercial music with the mandated hourly identification. This is due to the soft launch (station manager Ziggy Mrkich calls it a beta phase) a few weeks ago. I expect local shows to start populating the airwaves as time goes on, and I am told that local news coverage with “no politics” is slated for the future as well.

Very exciting indeed! I’ll have ongoing coverage as things develop.

Blast from the past

This is not the first time San Pedro has had a radio station to call its own. But it has been many years, er, decades.

Radio historian Jim Hilliker told me the story long ago: The McWhinnie Electric Company, then located at 1825 S. Pacific Avenue in San Pedro, decided to put a radio station on the air. As reported in the March 30, 1925 edition of the local newspaper, The Daily Pilot (one of the newspapers that eventually became part of this newspaper chain), McWhinnie brothers William (Bill) and Charles (Charlie) received permission from the Department of Commerce to build a radio station. The call letters were to be KFVD, and the assigned frequency was to be 1460 AM. It cost $31,000 (about $470,000 today) to get the station on the air, using a 100-watt transmitter and studios located at the company’s retail store. The first on-air test was June 12th, and the signal reached many parts of Southern California including Catalina Island.

The station featured a reception area, a large studio at 16×26 feet with a large glass window and soundproof walls, and a control and transmitter room all in the same building. Stories featured in The Pilot told of about 2000 people visiting the station on that Friday, as the studios were open to the public from 1-10 p.m. Hilliker wrote in the story featured by radioheritage.net that the head inspector for the Department of Commerce Radio Division said that “KFVD was one of the finest equipped stations in the country.”

The first official broadcast came the following night, Saturday, June 13th, from 8 p.m. to 3 a.m. The inaugural broadcast consisted of speeches, congratulatory messages and music and entertainment from both local and regional talent. It may seem odd, given what we know of radio today, but the fact that the station would then broadcast only three nights per week (Monday, Wednesday and Saturday) from 8 to 11 p.m. was not unusual in the early days of broadcasting. Numerous stations had to share the same frequency in radio’s infancy, so they couldn’t broadcast all day.

In addition to the evening broadcasts, the station also carried Sunday morning and Sunday evening services of the First Presbyterian Church, which due to the cost of the phone line needed to do the broadcast, was a major expense of the station. Funds to pay for the broadcasts came from individual donations, businesses, and the San Pedro Chamber of Commerce, which sponsored monthly programs to help publicize San Pedro on the radio.

As time went on, the programming expanded. News and current events were a major part of the broadcasts, and the station made an agreement with the Daily Pilot, allowing it to use the paper’s wire services for its news and sports reports. The Pilot in turn helped promote the station by listing the daily programs in an early version of a radio program log. Local musical talent rounded out the programming along with special features such as a one-act play presented and performed by students from San Pedro High School.

The San Pedro connection lasted until 1926. On  August 9th of that year, the station announced it would move its studios to the Venice Ballroom in Venice’s then oceanfront amusement park. No reason was given, but the move was quick: the station went off the air for almost a month beginning the day of the announcement. Newspaper reports alluded to giving the station a chance to expand its audience, but some believe that the transmitter’s location was causing interference with Navy ships in the area.

I am told that locals were a bit upset over the loss.

KFVD still exists; it eventually became KGBS and later KTNQ, broadcasting at 1020 AM since 1949.

Next week: Laguna Beach has a low-power relaunch as well

Richard Wagoner is a San Pedro freelance columnist covering radio in Southern California. Email rwagoner@socalradiowaves.com