KCXL

KCXL (1140 AM) is a commercial radio station licensed to Liberty, Missouri, and serving the Kansas City metropolitan area. It features a conservative talk and brokered programming format and is owned by Alpine Broadcasting. Since 2020, KCXL has been noted for its broadcast of the English-language service of Radio Sputnik, funded by the Russian government. Sputnik is heard six hours a day during the week and twelve hours on Saturdays and Sundays.

By day, KCXL is powered at 4,000 watts, using a non-directional antenna. But to protect other stations on 1140 AM from interference, at night it reduces power to only 6 watts. The AM transmitter and radio studios are on South La Frenz Road in Liberty.^[2] Programming is also heard on two FM translators licensed to Kansas City: K275BQ (102.9 FM) and K284CH (104.7 FM).

On September 7, 1966, Clay Broadcasters, Inc., a consortium of six local businessmen, obtained a construction permit from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to build a new 500-watt, daytime-only station in Liberty.^[3] KBIL—representing "Clay Broadcasting in Liberty"^[4]—went on the air February 12, 1967, with a country music format.^[5] The station was acquired by Mack Sanders's S & M Investments, which owned outlets in other Plains states, in 1971.^[6] Sanders retained what he called a "Proud Country" format, focusing on a traditional mix of country music.^[7]

S & M proposed to the FCC that 106.5 MHz be inserted at Liberty with changes to the frequencies of three other stations in the region. Construction of the FM took place in 1978. Simultaneously with the launch of the FM station, KBIL and the unbuilt FM were sold to Strauss Broadcasting Corporation for $1.28 million, with the stations becoming KFIX and KFIX-FM.^[8] Joe Abernathy, the general manager who ran the KFIX stations (and hired Rush Limbaugh under the name "Jeff Christie" as a late-night host on the FM side), was blamed by Strauss for financial mismanagement of the pair. Morning host Mike Murphy could not join for five months due to contractual obligations, and early issues with the FM signal kept listeners away.^[9]

The stations were then sold to Southwest Radio Enterprises, a division of Southwest Florida Enterprises; it was the firm's first broadcasting purchase. Southwest named Dean Goodman, later the owner of GoodRadio.TV, as CEO.^[10] The FM was renamed KSAS;^[11] the next year, it was the AM's turn for a revamp, becoming oldies under the call sign KLDY.^[12] The call letters were changed to KKCI in 1982 when Golden East Broadcasting purchased KLDY and KSAS and converted both stations to a simulcast.^[13]

Golden East put the AM station on the market and found a buyer in 1984: Elbert Anderson, the black owner of a local Coca-Cola bottling company. New studios were built on 63rd Street to handle the majority of the programming, and the station became KCXL with an urban contemporary format, the third local radio station for Kansas City's African-American community.^[13] A satellite studio was built in 1989 in The Landing shopping center.^[14]

However, because the signal was limited to the suburban Northland, it eventually fell short competing with longtime FM urban station KPRS. The station subsisted on the sale of air time to churches and on selling advertising around their programs. A dip in advertising revenue would prove to be too much for the station to bear. It went silent on March 4, 1992.^[15] KCXL was then sued by the Small Business Administration (SBA) for defaulting on a 1984 loan it had received to finance the purchase. No payments had been made since 1989.^[16]

The SBA took possession of KCXL's assets and put them up for sale. Two years later, the SBA had a buyer: Pete Schartel, a resident of nearby Independence, Missouri. He returned the station to the air.^[17][18] On November 21, 1994, the station signed on with an oldies format.^[19]

Since Schartel took over, the station has aired a myriad of programs under its talk format, most of them on a leased basis. For a time, sports station WHB leased KCXL at night for overflow sports programming. KCXL also had an overnight dance music format brokered to Surge Radio between 2016 and 2017. KCXL's general mix of programming was described by a 2020 article in The New York Times as "a cast of far-right conspiracy theorists, evangelical pastors and anti-Semites", including the radio program from far-right conspiracy theory outlet TruNews and far-right nationalist Alex Jones.^[20]

My wife and I really did discuss whether we should pull this programming. If I did, we'd be doing exactly what we're - the primary thing that we criticize - well, the old Soviet Union for sure, and other communist regimes of doing, where they don't allow free speech.

Pete Schartel, in an interview with NPR^[21]

In a time brokerage agreement with RM Broadcasting, KCXL began airing Radio Sputnik six hours a day beginning on January 1, 2020.^{[22][23][24][25]} The time brokerage agreement pays KCXL $100,217 per year,^[26] and Schartel later acknowledged he signed it largely for financial reasons.^[27] Funded and directed by the Russian government,^[25] the U.S. Department of State has declared that Russian media outlets Sputnik and RT (Russia Today) are "critical elements in Russia's disinformation and propaganda ecosystem."^[28]

In the wake of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the airing of Sputnik content on KCXL and other U.S. radio stations came under fire, with the National Association of Broadcasters calling on stations to cease airing such programming. However, in a March 2022 interview, Jonne Santoli-Schartel, the station manager, stated that even though she disapproves of the invasion of Ukraine, KCXL has no plans to discontinue its broadcast of Sputnik output, stating, "If we can't express our viewpoints anymore, and we have cancel culture, and people deleting and people putting pressure on other people to not hear certain programming, then we're in trouble and freedom no longer exists."^[29] The editorial board of The Kansas City Star criticized this decision as unethical and unpatriotic.^[30]

• KCXL official website
• Facility details for Facility ID 1162 (KCXL) in the FCC Licensing and Management System
• KCXL in Nielsen Audio's AM station database