Chester Smith

Chester Smith (March 29, 1930 – August 8, 2008) was a country-western musician and business entrepreneur.

Smith was born in Durant, Oklahoma, on March 29, 1930. He and his family relocated to Tranquility, California, just outside of Fresno in 1935 after escaping the dust bowl. He began singing on KMJ-AM Radio in Fresno with Gene Autry at age 9. After moving to Modesto in 1942, he found his way into the radio broadcasting business with several stations in the central California valley starting with KTRB-AM at age 12 and remaining there for 16 years. He dropped out of high school and started his own program on January 3, 1947. His life was immortalized in song with the catchy tune "The Ballad of Chester Smith", which he wrote and performed. On October 17, 1963, his first owned radio station KLOC-AM 920 hit the air in Ceres, California.

He started his television career at Sacramento television station KOVR. He hosted a music variety show that aired for thirteen weeks and featured local artists, a gospel quartet and a relatively unknown singer by the name of Merle Haggard. He also featured several celebrity guests before starting KLOC-AM. On August 26, 1966, Smith started his own television station KLOC-TV in Modesto with his first wife Naomi. It was the first 5,000,000-watt television UHF station in California and broadcast Spanish-language programming. In 1981, he launched a second Spanish-language station KCBA (now a FOX affiliate) in Salinas, California. He also started the first Spanish-language television station in Sacramento, KCSO, which has been an affiliate of Telemundo since it hit the air in 1999.

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