KLMS

Lincoln, Nebraska United States
Broadcast area	Lincoln metropolitan area
Frequency	1480 kHz
Branding	Mix 103.3
Programming
Format	Adult hits
Ownership
Owner	Alpha Media (Alpha 3E Licensee LLC)
Sister stations	KFOR, KFRX, KIBZ, KTGL, KZKX
History
First air date	October 24, 1949; 75 years ago (1949-10-24)
Last air date	December 10, 2024
Former call signs	KLMS (1948–1990) KFMQ (1990–1993) KMEM (1993–1997)
Technical information[1]
Licensing authority	FCC
Facility ID	54708
Class	B
Power	1,000 watts day 750 watts night
Transmitter coordinates	40°47′45.6″N 96°34′56.24″W / 40.796000°N 96.5822889°W / 40.796000; -96.5822889
Translator(s)	103.3 K277CA (Lincoln)
Links
Public license information	Public file LMS
Webcast	Listen live
Website	mymix1033.com

KLMS (1480 AM) was a commercial radio station in Lincoln, Nebraska.^[2] It is owned by Alpha Media and it features an adult hits radio format, switching to Christmas music for much of November and December.

KLMS is a Class B station. By day, it transmitted with 1,000 watts; to avoid interference to other stations on 1480 AM, at night it reduced power to 750 watts. It uses a directional antenna with a five-tower array.^[3] Programming is also heard on 250-watt FM translator K277CA on 103.3 MHz.^[4]

On June 28, 1946, the Lincoln Broadcasting Corporation applied to build a new radio station in Lincoln, to broadcast on 1480 kHz day and night with 1,000 watts.^[5] The corporation was headed by Howard A. Shuman, formerly of KFOR;^[6] Shuman had helped put that station on the air from David City in 1924.^[7] The application was granted on October 16, 1947,^[5] and the company began work on a five-tower array for transmitting.^[8] With independent programming,^[9] KLMS took to the air on October 24, 1949.^[10] Its programming emphasized music as well as local news and sports, though the station also had an affiliation with the short-lived Liberty Broadcasting System.^[11] Ownership and programming remained stable in the early years; Shuman acquired majority control of the company in 1960,^[5] while the Mutual Broadcasting System was added the next year.^[12] Those two changes coincided with a turn in KLMS's fortunes. For its first decade, the station had maintained a block programming format—a "department store of radio", as one later manager put it—but the implementation of a new adult contemporary-type format in 1959 turned KLMS into Lincoln's top station in 1960.^[13]

Shuman sold the station he had helped build 25 years prior to Telegraph-Herald, Inc., of Dubuque, Iowa, in 1974; the newspaper owned two other stations in the Midwest.^[14] Five years later, Telegraph-Herald purchased KFMQ (101.9 FM) from its general manager, Steve Agnew.^[15] Telegraph-Herald, Inc., became Woodward Communications in 1981, in a move to clarify the division between the newspaper and its parent company.^[16] Under Woodward, the station implemented directional daytime broadcasting from a full new transmitter site at 98th and A streets. Completed in 1983, the $500,000 site featured eight towers which were used in different configurations during the day and at night.^[17] In 1985, KLMS and KFMQ moved into the same offices, having never shared studio space despite being commonly owned for six years; by that time, KLMS's adult contemporary format had drifted to oldies.^[18]

In November 1986, Woodward Communications fired KLMS station manager Lee Thomas, who had been associated with the station since 1959 and had been program director for most of the previous 20 years.^[19] That decision turned out to have a direct effect on KLMS. Thomas joined with three other investors, all former KLMS-KFMQ employees, to buy struggling Lincoln-area FM station KJUS^[20] and relaunched it as oldies-formatted KLDZ in March 1987.^[21] KLDZ quickly captured significant audience share in the Lincoln market; though officials insisted that it was not due to the new competition, KLMS exited the oldies format in October and flipped to "The Breeze", a new-age music format fed by the Progressive Music Network of Minneapolis; it was the second station to take the service.^[22][23]

Woodward sold its Lincoln stations to Midwest Communications for $2.8 million in 1988.^[24] Midwest nearly immediately flipped KLMS back to oldies; the new-age format had been a failure, dropping the station's audience share from 4.9 percent to 0.7 percent in just six months, and advertisers had lost interest.^[25] The oldies revival, however, failed to recover listenership: it ended on November 14, 1990, when the poorly rated AM outlet switched to a simulcast of KFMQ and adopted the KFMQ call letters.^[26]

In 1993, a format hole opened abruptly in the market when KHAT (1530 AM), which played big band music, signed off at the end of April when its owner sold the transmitter site property for development and opted not to rebuild the station elsewhere.^[27] In response, KFMQ picked up the big band format and became KMEM on June 16,^[28] promoting itself as "Your Memory Music Station".^[29] The same week KHAT shut down, Midwest sold KFMQ to Radio One Nebraska, Inc., a company headed by Raymond Lamb, for $200,000.^[30]

Logos as an ESPN Radio affiliate.

Lamb sold 10 stations, including two in Lincoln, to Three Eagles Communications for a total of $6.9 million in July 1996.^[31] Two months later, Three Eagles bought KFRX (102.7 FM) and KFOR, giving it a four-station cluster in the Lincoln market.^[32] After initially promising no format changes, KMEM added two talk shows—Imus in the Morning and Nanci Donellan ("The Fabulous Sports Babe")—in February 1997.^[33] It was the prelude to a full-on format flip to sports that May, with a lineup of mostly national talk programs—including The Jim Rome Show—and overnight programming from One on One Sports,^[34] reclaiming its heritage KLMS call letters.^[35] In December 2000, KLMS switched networks from One on One Sports to ESPN Radio.^[36]

Since 1997, KLMS had only deviated from sports talk radio once. In January 2010, Three Eagles opted to return to an oldies format on the station for the first time in nearly three decades, attempting to capitalize on the heritage of KLMS in the 1960s and 1970s.^[37] Poor listener response to the removal of the sports talk format led Three Eagles to announce a month later that it would reinstate KLMS as it was prior to the switch.^[38]

After an FM station, KNTK (93.7 FM), announced it would flip to sports, KLMS—until then the only station in the format in Lincoln—responded by adding local programming to its lineup in afternoon drive.^[39]

Three Eagles was purchased by Digity in 2014 in a $66.5 million transaction encompassing 48 stations.^[40] Two years later, Digity and its 116 stations were acquired by Alpha Media for $264 million.^[41]

On February 15, 2023, at midnight, KLMS dropped the sports format and began simulcasting sister station KFOR; on the same date, KFOR began simulcasting on KLMS's FM translator K268DF (101.5 FM).^[42] The next day, KLMS flipped to adult hits, branded as "Mix 103.3", and began simulcasting on translator K277CA (103.3 FM), which formerly relayed KFOR.^[43]

On December 10, 2024, KLMS was voluntarily taken off the air. Programming for the K277CA (103.3 FM) translator now originates from KFRX-HD2.

Previous to the shutdown, Alpha Media filed with the FCC for Special Temporary Authority to operate at operate non-directionally at 25% of authorized nighttime power while repairs are made. The filing stated that the station suffered significant damage to its licensed transmission facility from a July 31, 2024 storm.

• Facility details for Facility ID 54708 (KLMS) in the FCC Licensing and Management System
• KLMS in Nielsen Audio's AM station database
• Facility details for Facility ID 138615 (K277CA) in the FCC Licensing and Management System
• K277CA at FCCdata.org
• FCC History Cards for KLMS