KBLX-FM
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| City | Berkeley, California |
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| Broadcast area | San Francisco Bay Area |
| Branding | R&B 102.9 KBLX |
| Slogan | The Bay's #1 For R&B |
| Frequency | 102.9 MHz |
| First air date | April 29, 1949 (as KRE-FM) |
| Format | Urban Adult Contemporary |
| ERP | 7,200 watts |
| HAAT | 387.0 meters (1,269.7 ft) |
| Class | B |
| Facility ID | 28670 |
| Transmitter coordinates | 37°41′21″N 122°26′8″W / 37.68917°N 122.43556°W |
| Callsign meaning | K BLaX (play on the word Blacks, its target audience) or possibly stands for the station's city of license which is Berkeley |
| Former callsigns | KRE-FM (1949-1962) KPAT-FM (1962-1973) KRE-FM (1973-1979) KBLX (1979-1986) |
| Owner |
Entercom Communications (Entercom License, LLC) |
| Sister stations | KGMZ, KOIT-FM, KUFX, KRBQ |
| Webcast | Listen Live |
| Website | kblx.com |
KBLX-FM is an Urban Adult Contemporary radio station that broadcasts from the San Francisco Bay Area. Broadcasting on 102.9 FM, the station is licensed to Berkeley, California, and is owned by Entercom Communications. The station has studios located in the SoMa district of San Francisco, and the transmitter is located atop the San Bruno Mountains.
Until its sale in April 2012, KBLX was owned for more than 30 years by the now-defunct Inner City Broadcasting Corporation and was better known as "The Quiet Storm" with a strong following among Bay Area listeners, especially the African American community.
On April 29, 1949, KRE-FM signed on simulcasting KRE's programming. In 1962, the station changed its call letters to KPAT-FM. In 1973, it changed its call letters back to KRE-FM.
In 1979, the station was sold to the New York-based Inner City Broadcasting Corporation, headed by Percy Sutton (which also owned its flagship station there, WBLS), and was relaunched as KBLX (the call letters KBLS, which would otherwise honor its sister-station relationship with WBLS, were unavailable, assigned to another station in Kansas). It was one of the first true radio stations with an adult contemporary format, hybrid with an Urban Contemporary format to focus on The Quiet Storm R&B subgenre era at the time. KBLX marketed the station as an adult contemporary format, rather than urban, in order to attract a wider audience.
Throughout the 1980s, the station played an eclectic mix of R&B, jazz and soft pop, reflecting the diverse music culture of the Bay Area. KBLX was the inspiration for the creation and launch of various adult contemporary radio formats across the country, from Smooth Jazz to soft rock AC to Urban AC, the latter which KBLX modified its format to years later. (The Urban AC terminology did not exist until 1988). Even then, for some time the station played mostly smooth R&B, rarely playing any uptempo R&B, current or old school. This was done to establish the station's own identity apart from competition from now-defunct Urban stations KSOL and KDIA, or its current competitors KMEL, KYLD and KISQ. The station's musical selection was also forged by its intense competition with smooth-jazz arch-rival KKSF.
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Wikipedia