| KSTE | |
| City: | Rancho Cordova, California |
| Area: | Sacramento metropolitan area |
| Branding: | Talk 650 KSTE |
| Frequency: | 650 kHz |
| Format: | Talk |
| Power: | 21,400 watts day 920 watts night |
| Class: | B |
| Facility Id: | 22883 |
| Network: | CBS News Radio |
| Affiliations: | |
| Owner: | iHeartMedia |
| Licensee: | iHM Licenses, LLC |
| Webcast: | Listen Live |
| Website: | kste.iheart.com |
| Licensing Authority: | FCC |
KSTE (650 AM) is a commercial radio station broadcasting a talk radio format. Licensed to Rancho Cordova, California, the station serves the Sacramento metropolitan area. The station is owned by iHeartMedia and features shows from Westwood One, Radio America, Compass Media Networks, and Premiere Networks, a subsidiary of iHeartMedia.[1] The studios and offices are in North Sacramento near the Arden Fair Mall.
KSTE transmits with 21,400 watts by day, but because 650 AM is a clear channel frequency reserved for Class A WSM in Nashville, Tennessee, KSTE must reduce power at night to 920 watts to avoid interfering with WSM and other stations on its frequency. It uses a directional antenna at all times with a two-tower array in the daytime and a three-tower array at night. The transmitter is southeast of the city in Vineyard, California.[2]
KSTE is programmed as a "second tier" talk station, secondary to its more dominant sister stations, 1530 KFBK and 93.1 KFBK-FM. While most of the KFBK schedule is hosted by local personalities, KSTE features nationally syndicated talk shows. Weekday mornings begin with Armstrong & Getty, a wake-up show based at KSTE and carried on stations around the West Coast and Hawaii. They are followed by Chad Benson, Sean Hannity, Dave Ramsey, Glenn Beck, Jesse Kelly, Joe Pags and Rich Valdes.
Weekends feature shows on money, health and cars, as well as some paid brokered programming. KSTE carries some syndicated shows on weekends including Bill Handel on the Law, The Kim Komando Show, The Mark Moss Show and Sunday Nights with Bill Cunningham, as well as repeats of weekday shows.
Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty joined KSTE in 1998 and now have one of the highest rated morning radio shows in Northern California. They can also be heard on radio stations in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Honolulu and other cities in the West. Armstrong & Getty is the only locally based weekday talk show on KSTE.
For a number of years, KSTE aired hourly CNN Radio newscasts from Westwood One, then known as Dial Global. On March 2, 2012, Dial Global announced it would discontinue distributing newscasts from CNN Radio and instead replace it with NBC News Radio. CNN Radio affiliates would be switched to NBC on April 1, 2012.[3] However, KSTE became an affiliate of the CBS Radio Network prior to the switchover. The station carried CBS News at the beginning of most hours.
In 2017, KSTE became an affiliate of a new version of NBC News Radio owned by iHeartMedia (unrelated to the Westwood One/Dial Global version); the station has since rejoined CBS News Radio. KSTE also airs some programming and news from ABC News Radio.
KSTE was the former home of Sacramento River Cats Minor League Baseball team, before moving to 1320 KIFM, an ESPN Radio station.
The station that today is KSTE was first planned in 1987. The construction permit was given the call sign KMCE as it was being prepared for broadcasting. The station signed on the air on . It was a Spanish-language outlet, owned by Minority Communications of California, Inc.[4] The following year, it changed call letters to KRDX.
The station was sold to Fuller-Jeffrey Broadcasting in December 1992 for $1 million.[5] The new owners changed the call sign to KSTE and the format switched to talk, carrying ABC News Radio for hourly newscasts.
In October 1997, the station changed hands again, this time to Chancellor Broadcasting, a forerunner of iHeartMedia.[6] iHeartMedia kept the talk format in place, making KSTE a rare radio station that, except for its first two years, has remained with the same format for its entire history.