The KXBT call letters briefly occupied Vallejo’s 1190 AM signal. The station known for years as KNBA was sold by longtime owner-operator Lou Ripa’s estate after Ripa’s 1992 death. The buyer was North Bay Broadcasters, the operators of Vacaville’s KUIC. KNBA became KXBT in December 1993, switching to a “soul oldies” format and billing itself as “The Beat of the Bay”under the guidance of general manager Stefan Ponek.
In March 1996, KXBT became the first station west of the Mississippi and only the second in the nation to begin broadcasting in the newly authorized AM “expanded band”, which opened up frequencies between 1610 kHz and 1700 kHz. The Federal Communications Commission had created the new landscape for AM stations to allow broadcasters to move to new frequencies that would allow them to transmit a more powerful signal with less likelihood of interference.
In the case of KXBT, this meant a 24-hour-a-day operation at 1640 on the dial, with a 10,000 watt signal that could easily cover Sacramento. The heritage KXBT station remained a daytime-only affair at 1,000 watts, meaning a less-expansive coverage area. At the start, both stations carried the same soul oldies format. The new FCC regulations permitted station owners to simulcast on their expanded-band stations for five years, after which they would have to either surrender the original lower-frequency license or create separate programming for the two stations.
One issue for the new stations was the lack of receivers designed to tune above the old 1600 limit on the dial, although many listeners found if they kept turning the tuning knob, they could sometimes bring in the expanded-band stations.
In late 1997, James Gabbert sold legendary Oakland station KDIA to the Walt Disney Corporation, which soon changed the call letters to KMKY (a tribute to Disney’s mascot Mickey Mouse) and installed the “Radio Disney” format.
At the same time, the KXBT stations were sold to East Bay-based Baybridge Communications. The KDIA call letters were quickly snapped up and affixed to the KXBT 1640 station, which continued to carry the “solid gold should” format and promised it would air a slate of Sunday religious programs that had long aired on Oakland’s KDIA.
KXBT, in the meantime, shifted its programming to Vietnamese-language content.
A few months later, in June 1998, the KXBT call letters were replaced by KDYA and the station shifted to urban gospel music, branding itself as “The Light 1190”.
