KISS-FM (brand)

KISS-FM is the brand name of a Top 40 music format heard on FM radio stations in many cities in the United States and overseas. iHeartMedia, Inc. claims ownership of the KISS-FM brand and operates most KISS-FM formatted stations, though not KISS-FM in San Antonio, Texas, or KISS-FM America on TuneIn.

In the late 1970s, many U.S. radio stations began calling themselves "Kiss". Among these was KIIS-FM in Los Angeles, which adopted that call sign in 1975 when it became a sister station to KIIS (AM)—whose call sign comes not from the word "Kiss" but rather its dial position at 1150, with the letters "I" and "S" being the letters most closely resembling 1 and 5, respectively.Gannett, which owned the station, filed a federal trademark registration for "KIIS" in 1986, which has passed on to subsequent owners of the station. In 1997, Country Club Communications registered the only current federal trademark for "KISS FM" (which has since also been assigned to iHeartMedia); the logo registered then included a stylized pair of lips.

Numerous other stations using "Kiss" as (part of) a service mark were acquired over the course of Clear Channel's growth, among them Boston's WXKS-FM and Hartford's WKSS; however, other stations calling themselves "Kiss" which predated the "KISS FM" trademark were not acquired, such as Beasley Broadcast Group's WNKS in Charlotte. Furthermore, not all Clear Channel "Kiss" stations use the national brand: WXKS-FM, the Boston branch, has never used "KISS FM", maintaining its "Kiss 108" identity from 1979. At least one station that used a non-Clear Channel-related "Kiss" branding, WWKS in Pittsburgh, would eventually be acquired by Clear Channel itself, although that station (now WXDX-FM) would flip to its current modern rock format long before being acquired by Clear Channel.

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