The license of the second-oldest broadcast station in the Quad Cities has been deleted 95 years after the station first signed on.
The FCC cancelled the license of WKBF/1270 (Rock Island) on June 1. An email available in the FCC database indicates the FCC took the action after licensee La Jefa Latino Broadcasting didn’t respond to an April 29 letter requesting information on WKBF’s operational status.
WKBF had most recently carried a Spanish-language format which was rebroadcast on separately-owned K289BI/105.7 (Davenport). K289BI went silent in 2018 and was subsequently sold to a non-commercial broadcaster which recently launched a new format on the frequency.
WKBF did not file a report to the FCC indicating that it was off the air, but a technical consultant representing K289BI’s new owner sent the FCC a letter in April alleging that WKBF had been off the air for more than a year and saying that its towers were demolished in January. Federal law says a station automatically forfeits its license if it’s off the air for more than a year.
WKBF had been licensed for 5kW day and night, using a non-directional antenna during the day and a directional pattern at night.
FCC history cards indicate WKBF first signed on as WHBF in 1925, making its longevity second only to WOC/1420 (Davenport) locally. Like all stations from that era, WHBF transmitted on several different frequencies before settling on its longtime 1270 dial position as a result of a continent-wide frequency shuffle in 1940.
While co-owned with the Rock Island Argus, WHBF signed on the market’s first FM station, WHBF-FM/98.9, in 1947 and the market’s second TV station, WHBF-TV/4, in 1950. Broadcasting Yearbooks list WHBF radio as an ABC affiliate in 1950 but show a CBS affiliation by 1954 (the TV station was always a CBS affiliate).
The AM station launched a longtime “Country Sunshine” format in the 1970s. In 1987, the radio station became WKBF when ownership of the TV and radio stations was split. (As seen in the video above, the call letters posted at the station’s transmitter site were never changed from WHBF in the 33 years that it was WKBF.)
WKBF continued with Country until the 1990s, which it switched to Nostalgia, only to briefly return to Country in the early 2000’s followed by Progressive Talk, Christian Talk, and then a series of Spanish-language formats.
Here are some audio samples from WKBF’s more recent history. First, 2004 when the station was Country:
Then, Progressive Talk in 2005:
“La Jefa” in 2012:
And finally, an ID recorded from a web feed after the FM translator launched in 2014:
WKBF is the fourth longtime AM radio station to have its license deleted this year in the Upper Midwest. See reports on the others in The State of AM Radio.