Hip-Hop Pioneer KDAY May Go Mandarin Amid Sale Rumors
LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — A Southland radio station best known for playing West Coast hip-hop and R&B music in its heyday during the mid-1990s will likely be sold, according to reports Thursday.
93.5 KDAY-FM, along with sister station KDEY-FM in Riverside/Ontario, is expected to be sold in a deal worth $20 million, RadioInsight.com reported.
Owner Magic Broadcasting has reportedly agreed to sell both stations to RBC Communications, which is partly owned by a Chinese satellite ownership group. Analysts say the sale could signal a switch to a Mandarin-speaking format.
KDAY, whose call letters hearken all the way back to 1580 AM KDAY in the 1980s, rose to fame as the first radio station in the U.S. to have an all-hip-hop format.
Prior to 2009, the station served as an all-Spanish language station, as well as a syndicated talk format, before returning to the niche that made its call letters famous: playing old school hip-hop and introducing artists such as LL Cool J, NWA and DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince.
Any potential programming change is unlikely to come before late summer, however, as the FCC still needs to approve the sale, according to RadioInsight.com.
Station officials were not immediately available for comment.
