AM Nighttime Only

[Russ Butler]

Reading Dan Strassberg's b-r-i post about AM nighttime-only stations 
reminds me of KPPC 1240AM in Los Angeles..... "the little radio station 
that could and did!"

Beginning on Christmas Day, December 25, 1924 as a 50watt station of the 
Pasadena Presbyterian Church by church volunteers, as a non-profit 
station with studios in the church's basement (unofficially people later 
called an "underground station") with it's transmitter on top of the 
church on Colorado Boulevard.  (The church is still there today.)  It 
went on the air after the first Christmas Day services.only for Sunday 
church services 11am to Noon, then shut down 6 days.

It had a "specified hours" FCC license to broadcast in 1938, Sundays 9am 
to 1 pm and 6:45pm to 9pm and on Wednesdays 7pm to 9pm again only for 
church services.

In the 1970's and 80's it went up to 22 hours a week,  after 1985 with 
250 watts it was broadcasting only at night weekdays and all day 
Sunday.  (Guess this would be sort of a nighttime-only station?)  Again 
in 1996, KPPC 1240AM only went on the air Sundays for the church service 
11am to Noon, then shut down for 6 days.

KPPC originally shared 1210AM in it's long history with a station in San 
Bernardino, there were also LA-area AM stations at 1220 Pomona, at 1230 
and 1260 in Los Angeles causing major interference with the 1240 
signal.  The church also started an FM station (KPPC 106.7FM in 1962 
selling it in 1968, now KROQ). 

The license still allowed for the transmitter to be turned on each 
Sunday morning for one hour, then turned off when the church service 
ended. KPPC had come full circle during its last year on the air in 
1996!! It went off the air forever in September, 1996 after 71 years and 
9 months.

Its sole purpose from the beginning once again was to broadcast the 
Sunday church services of its founder from the site where the station 
first went on the air Christmas Day of 1924. The station remaining 
silent the other 6 days of the week.

When I was looking for the KPPC studios in 1998, no one in the church 
office I met remembered the station or it's history.  I asked around the 
neighborhood and found that they had left the church basement for a 
Colorado Boulevard (that's where the Rose Parade is held every year) 
storefront. "KPPC 1240AM" was in small letters on the front door and a 
type-written note saying that the studios were being used to broadcast 
nighttime, Latino religious programming on the Pomona station.  It was 
dark, but peering inside the window, there were mics and Latino signage 
everywhere, so, in a way, KPPC founded by the Presbyterian church did 
have a religious life thereafter!

(Thanks to Jim Hilliker for some KPPC background history)
KPPC-FM is now in Pocatello, Idaho. There is no AM call.

=Russ Butler songbook2@comcast.net