KFYR boasts an enormous daytime coverage area. This is due to its location near the bottom of the AM dial; lower frequencies have longer waves that tend to travel farther across terrain. This is especially true for stations that operate at 5,000 watts or more. Additionally, North Dakota's flat landscape provides near-perfect ground conductivity. Combined with its transmitter height, this gives KFYR a daytime footprint equivalent to that of a full-power FM station. It can be heard across almost all of North Dakota during the day, as well as in parts of Minnesota, South Dakota, Montana, Manitoba and Saskatchewan. Under the right conditions, it reaches into Nebraska. It has been claimed that KFYR has the largest daytime coverage area of any AM radio station in the United States. A similar claim can be made for WNAX in Yankton, South Dakota, which transmits on 570 AM.
At night, two towers are used in a directional pattern to protect CBK, the CBC Radio One outlet for most of Saskatchewan, which operates on nearby 540 AM. Even with this restriction, KFYR still covers almost all of North Dakota at night. It is the primary entry point station for the Emergency Alert System in both North and South Dakota.
History
Early years
KFYR signed on the air in 1925; 99 years ago (1925). It was founded by Phillip J. Meyer and his wife, Etta Hoskins Meyer. It is Bismarck's oldest radio station. KFYR began operations with programming for only a few hours daily, signing off between shows. In its early years, it was an affiliate of the NBC Red Network, airing its dramas, comedies, news and sports during the "Golden Age of Radio."
Early programming included live studio musicians, transcribed music and programs, and live feeds from the NBC. Many popular soap operas, game shows, sporting events, religious services, children's programs, and big band broadcasts were part of the regular schedule. The station carried NBC's Monitor on weekends. Other programming included local news, weather, and sports, locally originated variety programs such as "What's The Weather" weekday mornings and "The Northwest Farmfront" weekdays at noon. Mike Dosch, an established musician from Strasburg, North Dakota (Lawrence Welk's hometown) was featured on several of the live shows and had his own late-night program of organ music for many years. There were also shows hosted by staff announcers who played recorded popular music by such artists as Nat King Cole, Doris Day, The Ames Brothers, Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians, and orchestras including Mantovani, Percy Faith, and Frank Chacksfield.
By 1950, the station had expanded its schedule to an 18-hour broadcast day. It began broadcasting at 6 a.m. and concluded at midnight.
TV and FM stations
In December 1953, it added television station KFYR-TV 5. Because KFYR was part of the NBC Radio Network, KFYR-TV became western North Dakota's NBC television affiliate, along with its three semi-satellites. In 1966, an FM station went on the air, KFYR-FM at 92.9 (now KYYY).
At one time, the Meyer Broadcasting Company roster also included AM radio stations in Billings and Great Falls, Montana, as well as an FM station in Minot, North Dakota. Marietta Meyer Ekberg, the Meyers' daughter, retired in 1998, and her radio holdings were sold to Jacor Communications,. Jacor, in turn, was acquired in 1999 by Clear Channel Communications, a forerunner to today's iHeartMedia.
Top 40 era
Facing stiff competition from more youthful stations, KFYR began to see its dominance and audience decline in the early 1960s. It decided to switch to a Top 40 format. It was popular with teenagers by virtue of its "torrid twenty" countdown show, which featured the twenty popular hits of the week. In the 1960s and 1970s, teenagers from South Dakota to parts of Canada enjoyed listening to "their" music on KFYR every evening (along with 1520 KOMA from Oklahoma City, 1090 KAAY from Little Rock, 890 WLS from Chicago, and 1500 KSTP from St. Paul).
KFYR gained brief national notoriety in 1979, when the station was sued in federal court by the Pointer Sisters and Elektra Records. The station had created a remix of their cover of Bruce Springsteen's "Fire" with "K-Fire" dubbed into the chorus where "fire" would be sung. The suit was settled out of court.
KFYR once broadcast in AM stereo, beginning with the Harris system in the mid-1980s, and later switching to the MotorolaC-QUAM system. KFYR discontinued broadcasting in AM stereo around the turn of the millennium.[2]
Switch to talk
As younger listeners increasingly tuned to FM for their hits, KFYR switched its music to adult contemporary and oldies. By the 1990s, it added more talk shows, until it had switched to a news-talk format. In 2011, it added an FM translator for listeners who prefer to hear the station on the FM dial. The translator on 99.7 FM was previously a simulcast of KQDY 94.5 FM before 2011.
