50,000 Watts; KIRO Powers Up

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• Hard to believe, there was a time when the station played music.
  Anyone know when that stopped?

  • KIRO spent the 1960s playing Middle of the road music in addition to long-form news and interview shows. Morning host Jim French spent many years broadcasting from the rotating restaurant atop the Space Needle and was live on the air from that perch during a 6.5-magnitude earthquake in April, 1965. Bonneville moved its Seattle radio and TV stations to the newly constructed "Broadcast House" at Third and Broad in 1968.
    In 1973, KIRO ended a 35-year affiliation with CBS—an affiliation it has since resumed—and switched to the Mutual Broadcasting System. Around this time, KIRO also picked up Herb Jepko's "Nitecap," a groundbreaking overnight telephone-talk show from Salt Lake City sister station KSL. KIRO "Newsradio 71" debuted in June 1974, with news and talk segments replacing most music programming.

• The station certainly did power up. It had many listeners in the southwestern part of BC for years and as a result, many Canadians had the opportunity to listen to the excellent programming offered by CBS. Late at night, the station also broadcast a program called "Alaska News." So, the signal really reached Alaska.