The KRRS call letters on this 1,000 watt station in Santa Rosa date to 1988. Before that, the station was heard as KWFN, KQTE, and KVRE.
The call letters were shifted to KRRS after the station was purchased by Keffco, an entity led by radio consultant Jim Kefford. The station was referred to on the air as “The Rose” and featured easy listening music and local news. What it didn’t feature was the longstanding live broadcast of Sunday morning services at St. Luke’s Lutheran Church; the pastor told The Press Democrat that the station was longer interested in accepting the paid programming.
Kefford hired Reg Lester to handle the morning show and brought in Marshall Phillips, former of KSAN and other San Francisco stations, to put together newscasts.
In early 1989, Kefford moved KRRS and his other Santa Rosa property, KXFX-FM (“The Fox”) into a remodeled building he would rather grandiosely christen “Fox Plaza” (there was already a skyscraper with that name in San Francisco, built on the site of the demolished Fox Theater).
The summer of 1989 saw Steve Sandman arrive from Eugene, OR, where he’d been managing other Keffco stations, to become general manager of the two Santa Rosa properties.
Barely a year later, “The Rose” was La Rosa. KRRS switched to Spanish-language programing, overseen by former KBBF programmer Baltazar Guzman. Kefford said he believed there were more than 50,000 Sonoma County residents who spoke Spanish as their first or second language. The move made KRRS the first commercial station in Sonoma County to broadcast entirely in Spanish.
When the Mexican city of Guadalajara was the scene of a series of deadly sewer-system explosions in 1992, KRRS listeners quickly donated $6,000 in cash as well as a large load of clothing and food for the relief effort.
In the summer of 1993, the Spanish-language station got a Spanish-speaking owner. KRRS was the first station purchased by Abel De Luna and his Moon Broadcasting. De Luna, a Mexican immigrant and former mayor of Healdsburg, had become a significant figure in the world of Mexican music. He paid $400,000 for the station.
Tragedy struck KRRS in November 1993 when popular disc jockey Martin Angel Salas and his girlfriend were killed in a Highway 37 crash. Salas was 26 years old.
De Luna christened the station La Maquina Musical and set out to build connections with Sonoma County’s Spanish-speaking community.
In 2011, De Luna sold the station (as well as KTOB, which he had also purchased and converted to Spanish-language programming) to California Broadcasting Company, headed by Ambrosio Vigil.
De Luna, now using the name Moon Foods for his radio licenses, reacquired KRRS in 2023.
