LAS VEGAS — Travel north of downtown and the Las Vegas Strip toward the Las Vegas Motor Speedway and, on the last exit before the venue, you just may spot a patch of sandy terrain that is home to four broadcast towers.
These towers have been the home of a pair of AM radio stations serving Southern Nevada since April 1975 and at some point in 1956, respectively.
As of March 1, both of these venerable AMs, today owned by Audacy Corp., will go dark. Why? A valuable land sale has been conducted, and there’s no new home for the stations’ towers.
RBR+TVBR has confirmed that KXST-AM 1140, a Sports Wagering Talk facility branded as “The Bet,” is already transitioning to an exclusive broadcast home on KLUC-FM 98.5 HD2. It will also be available to listeners on the Audacy app, a company spokesperson says.
At the same time, “The Talk of Las Vegas” — KDWN-AM 720 — will be transitioning to its 101.5 MHz FM translator high atop the Stratosphere, K268CS. Originally a home for “Lite FM,” the translator enjoys near market-wide coverage. And as KDWN’s FM simulcast partner, that’s attracted an audience officially making KDWN the market’s leading Spoken Word station.
As of today, Audacy app consumption of the stations is low. A source close to Audacy shared that Las Vegas over-the-air cume is around 55,000 for the AMs, with streaming roughly 5.5% of the total listening audience.
As part of the changes, Mark Levin‘s show has moved from KDWN to Audacy News/Talk sibling KXNT-AM 840, the directional 2-pattern Class B facility with 25kw nighttime/50kw daytime from four towers located even farther north of Las Vegas along I-15. Levin’s program will air from 6pm-9pm Pacific.
With the AM sign-offs, K268CS’s originating station will be KMXB-FM 94.1 HD3. Listeners will be hearing promos four times an hour as to the changes on KDWN.
KXST’s history in Las Vegas involves a sign on in 1956 at 1050 kHz under the KRBO calls. In the late 1960s, it relocated to 1140 kHz and became the new home for what in 1962 was rebranded as KLUC-AM under owner Meyer Gold. Over the last 45 years, the 1140 AM facility has been home to Adult Contemporary KMJJ, Heavy Metal Rocker KRSR “The Crusher,” and even tourist information in the mid-1990s as “Casino Radio.” It tried Sports as “The Fan” under American Radio Systems ownership in the late 1990s, Oldies, “Hot Talk” and from 2019-2013 was “KYDZ Radio,” airing a children’s music format.
Audacy, then Entercom, acquired what is today KXST through its tax-free Reverse Morris Trust merger with CBS Radio.
KDWN’s history is a bit shorter, but heralded. Founded by KRLA/Los Angeles Chief Engineer Jack Reeder and A.J. Williams, KDWN was a Full Service radio station and went all-Talk in 1980, rising toward the top of the ratings. Art Bell in 1983 used KDWN as the host of his “Coast to Coast AM” overnight program. In 1988, KDWN became one of the first stations to air The Rush Limbaugh Show in syndication.
Until October 2022, KDWN had been a Beasley Media Group property, acquired in 2006. That changed with a swap of the AM and its FM translator by Audacy for KXTE-FM 107.5.
Fueling that swap was a $40 million sale of the land where the KDWN and KXST towers presently sit. This was disclosed in the company’s Q3 2022 earnings call in November 2022. Given AM radio station valuations of late, the value of the land was likely much higher than that of the station licenses.
Interestingly, KDWN relocated to the tower site in 2020 because its prior home, in Henderson, Nev., was acquired by residential real estate developers.
As Audacy sees it, the Las Vegas land sale mirrors transactions that were seen in Houston and Chicago. There’s just one big difference: In Nevada the government owns upward of 85% of the state’s property. As such, finding a new location for AM radio station towers in a metropolis that continues to grow proved to be too challenging for Audacy.
Given the shift of audiences away from AM radio, precipitated by Audacy itself in markets such as New York and Los Angeles, is this a sign that Audacy is looking to get out of AM radio station ownership altogether? No. In particular, the moves could strengthen KXNT-AM, also a heritage property serving Las Vegas on the kHz band.
Asked specifically about FM simulcasts of 50kw Class A KNX-AM 1070 in Los Angeles, which can easily be heard in Las Vegas after dark, and of WINS-AM in New York, the Audacy representative explained that this was “more about increasing the reach of some of our bigger news brands across the country.”
For those that nevertheless continue to listen to AM radio in Las Vegas, the 1140 kHz signal will acquiesce to Audacy-owned KHTK-AM in Sacramento. That facility is 50kw but is a directional two-pattern operation using 5 towers to keep the signal west of the Sierra Nevada mountain range.
For KDWN, the 720 kHz frequency abandonment gives Nexstar Media Group’s WGN-AM greater after-dark reach, with a Class A 50kw signal from Chicago.
— Adam R Jacobson, with reporting from Alan Arazi in Summerlin.
