Broadcast area | Santa Clara Valley |
---|---|
Frequency | 1290 kHz |
Branding | Viên Thao |
Programming | |
Language(s) | Vietnamese |
Format | Music and talk |
Ownership | |
Owner |
|
History | |
First air date | August 31, 1957 |
Former call signs | KPER (1957–1967) |
Technical information [1] | |
Licensing authority | FCC |
Facility ID | 54572 |
Class | D |
Power |
|
Transmitter coordinates | 36°57′49″N 121°29′22″W / 36.96361°N 121.48944°W |
Links | |
Public license information | |
Website | www.vienthao.com |
KAZA (1290 kHz) is a commercial AM radio station licensed to Gilroy, California, and serving the Santa Clara Valley. It airs a radio format of Vietnamese language music and talk, and is branded Viên Thao Radio. The station is owned by Tron Dinh Do, through licensee Intelli, LLC. [2]
By day, KAZA is powered at 1,500 watts. To reduce interference to other stations on 1290 AM, it reduces power at night to 19 watts. It uses a non-directional antenna at all times. [3]
KPER was founded by Don Bernard and Chuck Jobbins, co-owners of the Bernard & Jobbins Broadcasting Company. [4] After being granted a construction permit by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on January 23 that year, the station first broadcast on August 31, 1957, with call sign KPER and five watts of power. [5] [6] The FCC officially granted KPER its broadcast license on November 21, 1957, and KPER increased its transmitting power to 500 watts and was licensed as a daytime-only station. [6] A member of the Keystone Broadcasting System, KPER also broadcast programming in Spanish and Portuguese. [4] KPER increased its power to 1,000 watts on January 21, 1959. [7] On May 2, 1963, KPER increased its power to 5,000 watts, a level continued to this day. [7]
On October 3, 1966, Bernard & Jobbins sold KPER to South Valley Broadcasters for $325,000. [8] [9] KPER became KAZA on July 15, 1967. [6] By 1968, KAZA began broadcasting 85 hours of Spanish programming weekly, in contrast to seven hours of Portuguese. [9]
South Valley Broadcasters sold KAZA to Radio Fiesta on March 29, 1973, for $522,500. [10]
KAZA began carrying Spanish language broadcasts of Oakland Raiders games in 2002, the most recent season the Raiders made the Super Bowl. [11] The broadcasts continued for the 2003 season, [12] before they moved to KZSF in 2004. [13]
In November 2010, Tron Dinh Do's Intelli LLC began operating KAZA on a local marketing agreement with Radio Fiesta and began broadcasting the Vietnamese language Viên Thao Radio network. Radio Fiesta ultimately sold KAZA to Intelli for nearly a million dollars in October 2014. [14]