KNTA succeeded KEGL in July 1976 with Federal Communications Commission approval of a change in call letters.
Under the continuing ownership of David Jacks’ Cascade Broadcasting, KNTA stuck with the Spanish-language programming that had been heard on KEGL. A well-known Santa Clara Valley broadcaster and adman named Gene Hogan became general manager of the station. Hogan, who’d been known for his show Here’s Hogan on KLOK in the 1950s and ‘60s, had an eye for undiscovered talent. Announcers included Erwin Higueros–later to become the longtime Spanish-language radio voice of the San Francisco Giants–and Mexico-born Gonzalo Valverde.
The station was known for its Spanish-language sports coverage of the original San Jose Earthquakes soccer team as well as Major League Baseball’s Oakland A’s. Those A’s broadcasts were called by Amaury Pi-Gonzalez and Evelio Mendoza.
Through the ’80s, KNTA built a solid base among the South Bay’s large Hispanic population, offering California’s only 24-hour-a-day schedule of Spanish-language programming. The format was described as “Mexican Top-40 and a few oldies”.
Promotional efforts included sponsorship of Hispanic Fiesta events at San Mateo’s Bay Meadows racetrack. The station’s signal didn’t reach much beyond the San Mateo Bridge, meaning those Oakland A’s fans tuning in for the ballgame in Spanish couldn’t hear it at the Oakland Coliseum.
In 1982, a corporate restructuring put the station under the ownership of Tamarack Communications, still controlled by David Jack.
A year later, plans to build a new four-tower transmitter array in the Alviso district of San Jose triggered controversy. Conservation groups as well as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service objected to the 182-foot towers and their guy wires, arguing that the structures would kill birds and create visual blight. Acknowledging the bird-strike problem deserved attention, Jack downplayed the “ugly towers” argument. Noting the proposed site bordered a landfill site, Jack told UPI, “I think radio towers are beautiful”. San Jose Planning Commission members didn’t see it that way, unanimously rejecting the plan.
1985 saw KNTA add San Francisco 49ers football to its Spanish-language sports coverage with Tony Lopez and former San Jose Mercury-News sportswriter Fred Guzman handling the broadcasts. In 1987, the station picked up Los Angeles Raiders NFL broadcasts distributed by Lotus Satellite Network.
By the late 1980s, Bay Area listeners were finding a plethora of Spanish-language radio options. The 1988 purchase of KLOK by former NFL kicker Danny Villanueva and his brother Jim added another Spanish-language signal to the mix. The Villanuevas described KLOK’s format as contemporary hits and oldies aimed at the 25-54 year old demographic. Their co-owned FM station KBRG aimed at a younger crowd. And football: KLOK outbid KNTA to grab rights to 49ers broadcasts. It was clear that the Bay Area’s estimated 825,000 Hispanic residents represented an important commercial opportunity for radio station owners.
KNTA still had Oakland A’s baseball, broadcasting their World Series-winning seasons in 1988 and 1989. For the ’89 season, A’s manager Tony La Russa displayed his Spanish fluency by contributing a regular pre-game show. Despite the A’s dominance and the loyalty of their fans, the station’s unwillingness to spend money on travel meant play-by-play man Pi-Gonzalez generally covered only home games from the ballpark. For most away games, he relied on the old-school radio art of the re-creation.
The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake served as a reminder of the importance of native-language media. In the aftermath of the October 17 quake, KNTA news editor Jose Armendariz told the Oakland Tribune that older listeners, in particular, relied upon the station. He said, “there’s no better reassurance than from someone who speaks your language.”
In the spring of 1993, KNTA was sold for $1.4 million to San Jose-based Imperio Enterprises, headed by Mexican immigrant Genaro Guizar. Guizar represented a classic California success story: he told the San Francisco Chronicle that he’d entered the U.S. illegally in 1969, worked his way up to a foreman position at a General Electric facility, and became a U.S. citizen in 1986. By the time he bought KNTA, he headed a group that owned a chain of Mexican restaurants in the Bay Area.
Tamarack Communications received a minority sale tax certificate, using a then-existing federal program that allowed broadcasters selling stations to minority or women-owned companies to defer capital gains taxes.
In 1997, Inner City Broadcasting, the owners of Berkeley’s KBLX and KVTO (the former KRE) paid $2.2 million to acquire KNTA from Guizar. Inner City’s acquisition spelled the end of the Spanish-language programming and of the KNTA call letters. In the fall of 1997, the station became KVVN, targeting the more than 100,000 Vietnamese-Americans living in the San Jose area.
