KSJX became the third set of call letters to be used on the 1500 AM frequency in San Jose when then-owner Narragansett Broadcasting Company ditched a poor-performing oldies format on KHTT and switched to the syndicated Business Radio Network product. The changeover occurred on March 1, 1989.
The KHTT call letters would almost immediately be snapped up by Fuller-Jeffrey Broadcasting, which had just purchased Sonoma County stations KSRO and KREO. KREO would become KHTT “The Heat”.
Narragansett’s foray into business news radio lasted a year; at that point, the company switched the station to a simulcast of co-owned KSJO‘s album-oriented rock format. The move saved the company the $1,000 a month it said it had been paying to carry the Business Radio Network service.
A year after that, another switch. This time, KSJX became a rare example of an AM station programming hard rock music. Now known as “X-Rock 1500”, the station was using an automation system. General manager David Baronfeld told Broadcasting magazine, “The AM’s been sitting around gathering dust since we blew out the Business Radio Network, and we thought this new format would be a good complement to the FM.” Baronfeld said they’d switch to live DJ’s “once we start generating some cash.”
KSJX carried San Jose State University sports for several years. The station also aired the games of the San Jose Jammers, a short-lived member of the minor-league Continental Basketball Association, before the team moved to Bakersfield and soon disbanded.
Narragansett would unload KSJX and KSJO in October of 1991. The buyer, Bay Com Partners, paid $5.5 million for the two stations. Bay Com was headed by former K-101 general manager Jack McSorley. The transaction put the station back in local ownership for the first time since 1978.
In March 1992, the station ended all of its English-language programming. There were programs in Korean, Vietnamese, Tagalog, Hindi and Urdu. A few months later, Bay Com teamed up with Sino Broadcasting Corporation and Palo Alto-based Douglas Broadcasting to launch a five-day-a-week schedule of Cantonese-language programming. The Hong Kong-focused programming was the first commercial Cantonese radio heard in the Bay Area since the end of the long-running Golden Star Radio broadcasts some fifteen years earlier.
In early 1995, KEST owner Douglas Broadcasting, which had been managing the station under Bay Com’s ownership, bought KSJX outright for $2.1 million. By then, the programming was completely in Vietnamese.
Douglas’ ownership of KSJX ended in 1998 when KSJX and KEST were sold to New York City-based Multicultural Radio Broadcasting.
A fast-moving grass fire in 2010 swept through the property surrounding the KSJX transmitter and studio site adjacent to Highway 101 in East San Jose. While the transmitter would be restored after three years of operations under a special temporary authority from the Federal Communications Commission, the KSJX studios were moved a couple of miles to a location on Oakland Road.
By 2026, Multicultural could describe KSJX as “the largest and longest running Vietnamese radio station in Northern California. All programs are locally produced and include news, talk, information, music, call-ins, current affairs, community issues, world commentary and poetry.”
