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| KFSG LA 4 Square Gospel
Pioneer L. A. Christian Station Stops Broadcasting After 79 Years
by Jim Hilliker
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KFSG Towers 1920s
© Jim Hilliker Collection
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In August 2002, I wrote a history of KFSG radio that appeared on
LARadio.com. That story was mostly a technical timeline of the
station’s changing frequencies and transmitter powers over the years,
and the station’s relationship with KRKD, today’s 1150-AM license,
since KFSG divided time with that station for more than 32 years.
This time, I hope to cover KFSG from a different standpoint, mainly
focusing on its earliest years on the air. I feel it was a
legendary radio station in Los Angeles history, in its own way. I
also believe it has left behind a strong foundation for Christian
broadcasting stations to build on over the years, which will enable
other such stations to continue in its path.
After 79 years of broadcasting in Los Angeles, Christian radio station KFSG
sent its final words over the radio on the night of February 28/March
1, 2003, just before the clock struck midnight.
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KFSG Letterhead
© Jim Hilliker Collection
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Never mind that
their 93.5 FM signal was licensed to Redondo Beach, with a twin
transmitter on 93.5 licensed to Ontario. KFSG had three previous
radio station licenses, on 96.3 FM in Los Angeles from 1970 to 2001,
and two licenses to broadcast on the AM band, from 1924 to 1970.
So, why did KFSG go off the air after 79 years? The company that
owned the licenses for these stations, Spanish Broadcasting System,
cancelled KFSG’s lease to use 93.5, so KFSG had to vacate the
frequencies and leave the air. The two 93.5 stations became KZAB
and KZBA, broadcasting in Spanish. The pioneer religious station
of the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel is gone from the
Southern California airwaves, and the organization so far has no idea
about future plans to get a station in the L.A. area again. With
the silencing of KFSG, their historic call letters are gone from Los
Angeles, for now. A foreign-language/religious station on 1690-AM
in Roseville, CA picked up the KFSG call letters on March 13th.
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Aimee Semple McPherson ca 1924
© Jim Hilliker Collection
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Sadly, for longtime listeners and radio historians, there was no extensive “goodbye”
broadcast with a retrospective or history of the station, listener
calls, memories from former KFSG workers, old airchecks,
or an explanation of why KFSG was leaving the air,
during its final hour. This is not too surprising. In late
1988, when I found out that KFAC on 1330-AM was leaving the air because
it was being sold to the owners of KWKW-1300, I wrote a short history
of KFAC and KWKW. I ended the piece with a comment, wondering if
the station would make any special announcement before the final
KFAC-AM ID was to be heard, and then gone forever.
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Aimee Semple McPherson and Kenneth G. Ormiston
© Jim Hilliker Collection
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My story ended
up in the hands of KFAC’s owners. After they read it, they decided they
would make some special announcement.
When the final moments came
on the night of January 17, 1989, they did make a special effort to
explain that it was the last broadcast of KFAC-1330 AM after nearly 58
years and why the station was changing over to Spanish as KWKW.
But it was only a brief 3½ minutes, far too short to do justice to
KFAC’s history. I hope what I have written below about the early
years of KFSG, will fill in the gaps for those listeners who were
disappointed, that the station didn’t make any effort to pay a tribute
to those broadcasters who started KFSG in its infancy and kept it
going. For the others who may read this, I hope you’ll enjoy this
slice of Los Angeles radio history.
With so many radio stations to choose from in Los
Angeles, I suppose a station like KFSG could have been lost in the
shuffle by today’s radio listeners, given its format. After all,
it did not show up in the Arbitron ratings of Los Angeles radio
stations. Most L.A. radio listeners probably never have heard of
KFSG.
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KFSG QSL card ca 1940
© Jim Hilliker Collection
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That’s understandable, since this station was enormously
popular 75 to 80 years ago when radio was the newest “fad”, and there
were only anywhere from 6 to 14 radio stations in L.A. and surrounding
cities. The population of Los Angeles was still under 1 million
at the time. But one thing is certain. There never would
have been a KFSG without Aimee Semple McPherson, the woman evangelist
who got the station on the air in 1924. Today, if some people
know her name, it’s only because of an infamous kidnapping scandal in
1926, in which the press accused her of running off for a while with
her former KFSG engineer, who was married. Others may have known
or heard that actress Marilyn Monroe (Norma Jean Baker) was baptized by
Aimee in 1926 at Angelus Temple and actor Anthony Quinn played in the
Temple band as a teenager in the early-1930s. He also translated
Aimee’s sermons into Spanish for the Mexicans attending the
services. She was even immortalized in the 1937 song “Hooray for
Hollywood”, in which songwriter Johnny Mercer included these lyrics,
“Where anyone at all, from Shirley Temple to Aimee Semple, is equally
understood.”
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Jim Hilliker
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Jim Hilliker is a radio historian and former broadcaster. He has
written a number of articles on the history of broadcasting in Los
Angeles. He currently lives in Monterey, California.
This article is © 2003 - Jim Hilliker
Interested in reading more about LA Radio personalities? Buy Don Barrett's Los Angeles Radio People available through The Emporium Radio Heritage Store © and support the Radio Heritage Foundation.
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