KTRS (AM)

KTRS

City of license	St. Louis, Missouri
Broadcast area	Greater St. Louis
Branding	The Big 5-50, KTRS
Slogan	"The Talk of Saint Louis
Frequency	550 kHz AM
First air date	June 26, 1922 (as KSD-AM)
Format	News/Talk
Power	5,000 watts
Callsign meaning	K Talk Radio St. Louis.
Former callsigns	KSD (1922-1982) KUSA (1983-1993) KSD (1993-1997)
Affiliations	ABC News
Owner	CH Radio Holdings and the majority owner, the St. Louis Cardinals
Webcast	Listen Live
Website	www.ktrs.com

KTRS (550 AM) in an American radio station licensed to serve the community of Maryland Heights, Missouri that carries a News/Talk format. The station is owned by the St. Louis Cardinals and CH Radio Holdings. It broadcasts with 5,000 watts of power during the day and 5,000 watts at night. The call letters KTRS stand for K Talk Radio St. Louis.

Programming

Notable weekday programming includes Coast to Coast AM overnights, "Farmer Dave" Schumacher on early mornings, McGraw Millhaven in morning drive, Steve Cochran on mid-days, JC Corcoran (with producer Trish Gazall) on early afternoons, The Large Morning Show in the Afternoon, Steve Cochran on evenings, plus Sportsnight with John Marecek (with "The Jack Clark Show") on nights.

Weekend programming consists of how-to, advice, and trivia shows with occasional Mizzou sports events. National news is provided by ABC. Local news is presented by Victoria Babu, Michael Golde, and Shaun Streeter.

Sports programming

• Missouri Tigers basketball, football, Tiger Talk, and Tiger Update.
• St. Louis Falcons ice hockey, Falcons Pre-Game, Falcons Postgame, Falcons Weekly, (Fridays at 7 PM)

History

KSD, owned by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, began broadcasting experimentally in 1921 at 833 kHz with 27 watts of power. The official sign-on didn't take place until June 26, 1922. KSD moved to 550 kHz in 1923, with an increase in power to 5,000 watts daytime and 1,000 watts nighttime taking place in 1934. KSD was one of the first eight radio stations of the NBC Radio Network in 1926. That association lasted until the early 1980s. Sister station KSD-TV (now KSDK) went on the air February 8, 1947. KSD radio also played standards and classical music, before moving to a Top 40 format in early-1971.

After eventually settling on an all-news format in early 1980, KSD switched to country music the following year, and became KUSA three years later. The year 1993 saw the restoration of the KSD call letters and a switch to standards music, which was its format before 1971. The station was purchased by its current owners, CH Radio Holdings, in 1997. 1997 was also the year the station became KTRS and the current News/Talk format was put in place.

KUSA started AM stereo broadcasts in 1983 after rebuilding most of their transmitter to accommodate stereo transmissions. Stereo broadcasts continued throughout most of the 1990s, using the C-QUAM standard. In 1997, KTRS stopped sending stereo programming to the transmitter but continued broadcasting the stereo pilot signal. In 2001, the stereo pilot was silenced.

KTRS is the home of The Large Morning Show in the Afternoon, which features host Frank O Pinion (John Craddock), the highest rated, as well as the highest paid radio personality in St. Louis.^{[citation needed]} Along with Frank are Dan Strauss (producer), Ian Geisz, and Tina Dalpiaz.

Pinion is one of the few on-air personalities to survive a major change in personnel announced in December 2005. KTRS Morning Show hosts Bill Wilkerson and Wendy Wiese, sports director Jim Holder (the public address announcer at the Edward Jones Dome for the NFL Rams' games), Randy Karraker, McGraw Milhaven, Kevin Horrigan, Scott St. James and Meme Wolff were all fired. Management, including program director Al Brady Law, announced plans to bring in a new lineup beginning in January 2006. Milhaven, however, was reinstated during the spring of 2006. Law was fired on December 11 of that year. KTRS broadcast the St. Louis Blues from 2000-2006. In 2006, the Blues moved to competitor KMOX.

After five years (2006–10), KTRS lost the rights of the St. Louis Cardinals to KMOX starting in 2011. (The station is still partially owned by the Cardinals, even though they are now back on KMOX.) Since then, the focus has been on personalities. With the elimination of the Cardinals, KTRS now airs the Missouri Tigers athletics as well as their weekly sports show.

KTRS announced on October 6, 2010, that it it had hired the well-known radio personality J.C. Corcoran to fill its midday, weekday slot starting October 25, 2010. Trish Gazall, who had been John Brown's co-host, joined JC in January 2011 as his producer. Steve Cochran, formerly of WGN in Chicago, hosts a weekday evening talk show.

The studios are in Westport Plaza.

External links

• Official website
• Query the FCC's AM station database for KTRS
• Radio-Locator Information on KTRS
• Query Arbitron's AM station database for KTRS