KRDG (AM)

C. E. Wilson and Philip D. Jackson, doing business as independent broadcasters, were granted a construction permit by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on June 6, 1957, for a new 1,000-watt, daytime-only radio station to serve Redding.^[2] Wilson sold his interest to his partner before launch, and Jackson built and started KPAP, which began broadcasting June 3, 1958, as the town's fourth radio station, with a format consisting of pop and country music.^[3] Jackson owned the station scarcely a month before filing to sell it to High Fidelity Stations, Inc., which in turn was granted a move to 1330 kHz and a power increase to 5,000 watts in 1960.^[2] On February 1, 1961, KPAP changed its call sign to KAHR, continuing with its country format.^[2][4] The frequency change was completed on October 10 of that year.^[5] On April Fool's Day 1966, KVIP (540 AM) and KAHR engaged in a prank by which the two stations switched signals for the day; lines were run between the two stations to allow them to broadcast each other's programming.^[6] Callers flooded both stations' switchboards, one even thinking the stunt was a "John Birch Society plot", as the event led to what KVIP manager Donald Chamberlain termed "mass confusion".^[6]

While High Fidelity made a deal to buy an FM station construction permit at 92.9 MHz in 1966,^[7][8] nothing ever came of the purchase. Instead, High Fidelity found itself in bankruptcy, and the buyer caused a series of shuffles in Redding radio. California Northwest Broadcasting Company, the McConnell family and owners of KVIQ-TV in Eureka, had the winning bid of $55,000 in bankruptcy court in February 1968.^[9] McConnell was also a shareholder in Shasta Broadcasting Corporation, which owned KVIP. As McConnell promised to divest himself of KVIP, a series of KVIP staff left that station and came to KAHR to stabilize the financially ailing operation.^[10] The station by this time had a full-time country music format.^[11] While KVIP stockholders decided to sell, and the station ultimately was silent for nearly a year before being purchased by a religious group,^[12] KAHR changed to KCLM (for "Carl and Leah McConnell") on February 10, 1969.^[13]

The McConnells sold KCLM to Colgan Communications Corporation in 1976.^[2] The owner, John A. Colgan, was a former advertising salesman for The Wall Street Journal and U.S. News & World Report.^[14] Colgan filed for a construction permit to build an FM station in addition to KCLM,^[15] which ended in a settlement whereby Colgan received a 19 percent stake in KSHA (104.3 FM), which started in 1981.^[16] While a sale agreement was reached that same year to sell the station to Walls and Jones Broadcasting of Tulare,^[17] no deal was ever concluded, and after John Colgan died at 55 in August 1982,^[18] the station was left without the promotional budget to compete against other country music stations and in an increasingly FM-oriented market.^[19]

Larry and Mildred DeBeau, who had previously owned stations in Michigan and Florida, filed in 1984 to acquire KCLM from Colgan's estate for $400,000.^[19] The DeBeaus installed an "uptempo easy listening" format on the station, relocated it to new studios, and converted it to broadcast C-QUAM stereo, the first in the Redding area.^[20] The call sign was retained, with the station branding as "K-Calm".^[21] The DeBeaus sold the station after less than a year to Jeffrey Broadcasting—owned by two couples from Walnut Grove—because their son opted to remain a law enforcement official in Florida instead of moving to Redding to run KCLM.^[22]

In January 1987, Prather-Breck Broadcasting, a partnership of two Redding men that owned KEWB (94.7 FM) in Anderson, acquired KCLM from Jeffrey Broadcasting. They replaced the existing easy listening format with oldies and acquired a set of heritage call letters: KRDG, which at 1230 AM had belonged to Redding's heritage Top 40 station in the 1950s and 1960s.^[23] In 1989, Prather and Breck sold KEWB to another company but retained KRDG.^[24] A year later, the station dropped its oldies format and flipped to contemporary Christian music, taking a feed from KLVR in Santa Rosa.^[25]

In 1991, Prather-Breck filed to sell KRDG to the owner of KLVR, the Educational Media Foundation, for $46,000.^[26] No transaction ever closed, and in July 1996, the license was deleted, with the FCC noting that it had last broadcast in November 1994.^[27]