Las Vegas' Heritage Classic Rock Station 1986-2005


Abridged from Wikipedia: KKLZ signed on in September of 1983 under the original call letters KITT. KITT aired a Top 40-style music format that lasted three years. On January 1, 1986, KITT became Las Vegas' first all-classic rock station, originally branded as "Z-96 FM." The call letters were changed to KKLZ about a year and a half later.

"96-3 KKLZ" was Las Vegas' heritage Classic Rock station between 1987 and 2005. A station that prided itself on being cooler than the rest, KKLZ thrived through the 1990s by playing a wide variety of classic rock music and artists, featuring a lineup of personalities that included The O Brothers, Johnson & Tofte, Dan Lea,"Professor" Jeff Anderson, Dennis Mitchell, The Warrior, Kim Kelly, Bruno and The Big Kahuna, among others. It was listener-active with a big fat playlist, and home to locally-produced programs such as "The Poorman's Concert," "Night of the Living Dead," "Cruisin' for a Bluesin'" and one of the original "Breakfast with the Beatles" programs, which is still hosted by Mitchell on KUNV 91.5 FM in Las Vegas, along with 45 other stations nationwide.

KKLZ's "big bang" was in a run-down second-story studio on Desert Inn Road in Las Vegas, but the station gained listeners and momentum before moving to an office park facing the Strip on Industrial Road. The O Brothers (Garry O'Neal and Mike Olson) were Las Vegas' first legitimate rock morning show and garnered huge ratings before moving on to larger markets. After a brief stint by New Orleans transplants Butz & Tucker, the midwestern duo of Johnson & Tofte (Ken & Jim, respectively) burst onto the scene in early 1990. It was not like any radio Las Vegas had ever experienced, with a penchant toward mocking the conventional with intelligent and sometimes cruel humor. The pair were among the highest-rated local morning show in the city's history through the mid-1990's, until they were unceremoniously fired when the content of their show rubbed management the wrong way one time too many.

From 1993 to 2002, KKLZ presented an annual concert festival known as "Junefest." It was held the first Saturday of every June on soccer fields just outside Silver Bowl Stadium, and the ten concerts featured a long roster of some of the greatest artists in the history of the classic rock genre. Listeners besieged the station with suggestions for band lineups all year and requests for information about the show as it approached each year. Attendance ranged between 20,000 and 40,000, but the series came to an end after Junefest 10, when the corporation that owned the station decided it wasn't profitable enough to continue.

Having survived several ownership changes over the years, the station enjoyed a resurgence a few years back, and was the #1 rock music station in Las Vegas among males between the ages of 25 and 54 during the Spring 2005 ratings period. However, management failed to capitalize on the strong ratings, choosing instead to modify the music playlist, rely more on consultants, and put an end to all request programming. The ratings began to decline almost immediately. On May 24, 2007, the management at KKLZ pulled the plug on its heritage classic rock format, opting for a bizarre blend of oldies and pop hits and, at the outset, no DJs. It was described by Las Vegas Weekly (December 2007) as "Generic Whatever."