KQNM
| City | Albuquerque, New Mexico |
|---|---|
| Broadcast area | Albuquerque metropolitan area |
| Branding | Immaculate Heart Radio |
| Frequency | 1550 kHz |
| Translator(s) | 98.9 K255AU (Corrales) |
| First air date | March 29, 1972 (as KAMX) |
| Format | Catholic |
| Power | 10,000 watts (day) 27 watts (night) |
| Class | D |
| Facility ID | 4705 |
| Transmitter coordinates | 35°06′02″N 106°40′34″W / 35.10056°N 106.67611°WCoordinates: 35°06′02″N 106°40′34″W / 35.10056°N 106.67611°W |
| Former callsigns | KAMX (1972-1994) KDZZ (1994-1996) KHTZ (1996-1999) KSYU (1999) KQEO (1999-2000) KYJY (2000) KKJY (2000-2008) KQNM (2008-2009) KIVA (2009-2012) KRKE (2012-2015) |
| Owner | IHR Educational Broadcasting |
| Website | ihradio.com |
KQNM (1550 AM) is an American radio station based in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The transmitter tower is in the city's Old Town district northwest of downtown. KQNM is owned by IHR Educational Broadcasting and airs a Catholic radio ministry featuring mostly talk programs.
This station originally broadcast on 1520 AM as KAMX in 1972. It had aired Spanish language programming throughout the 1970s. Later it mostly carried programming that was broadcast on the 107.9 FM frequency. However, the station could only be heard during daytime hours due to night time interference from KOMA (now KOKC) out of Oklahoma City. In 1995, it broke off from 107.9 simulcasting and began to run children's programming from Radio AAHS as KDZZ, but it would return to simulcasting 107.9 in late 1996 under callsign KHTZ moved from 100.3 FM until 1999.
In 2000, the station was sold to Vanguard Media and moved to the 1550 frequency under the call letters KKJY, which allowed for the station to increase its daytime power and initiate nighttime operation. It began broadcasting an adult standards format to fill a void left after KIVA 1310 AM had dropped the format for talk. It picked up the KKJY call sign that had once belonged locally to 100.3 FM, which had a long running easy listening format from 1979 to 1994. It was branded as "Joy AM".
In 2006, the station's format shifted to soft AC. On July 25, 2008, it again changed its call sign to KQNM and called itself "Soft Favorites 1550". On May 18, 2009, it changed to KIVA while moving the KQNM call sign to 1100 kHz in Milan, New Mexico. The KIVA format was changed to talk radio on June 15, 2009. On August 28, 2012, the station swapped dial positions with KIVA moving the talk format and KIVA callsign to 1600 and KRKE moving from 1600 to 1550.
On September 22, 2015, the call letters were changed back to KQNM, with KRKE moving to 1090 in Milan. Soon after Vanguard had taken the station off the air and had put the station up for sale. In 2014 Vanguard had divested KIVA (AM) to Rock of Talk LLC. IHR Educational Broadcasting had purchased the station and began to air it's Catholic radio format beginning in late September 2016.
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