KBCO
Encyclopedia
KBCO is a AAA
radio station
licensed to Boulder, Colorado
, United States
, that serves the Denver
-Boulder
area. The station's format, dubbed "World Class Rock," is an eclectic variety of pop
, rock
, blues
, reggae
and folk
, from the late-1960s to the present.
The Clear Channel Communications
outlet broadcasts with an effective radiated power
of 100 kW. KBCO's studios are located on Boulder's renowned Pearl Street. The transmitter is located southwest of Eldorado Springs, Colorado
, at the top of Eldorado Mountain
at an elevation of 8,400 feet above sea level, or 469 meters above average terrain.
Scott Arbough, who started as a part time DJ at KBCO in 1985, is the current Program Director.
KBCO can also be heard via translator K232AC (94.3 FM) located west of Denver in Summit County
on Baldy Mountain
.
The original airstaff included Dennis Constantine, the station's original program director, in the mornings; Nick Frazer overnight, Music Director Judy McNutt and production director Richard Ray.
The freedom allowed to the airstaff in the early days bred exceptional creativity. The station produced an award winning series of yearly broadcasts, collectively known as "Intervention Day: Planet Earth's Premier Holiday." Intervention Day broadcasts were set in the future and celebrated the day the Inter-Galactic Community intervened to prevent Earth's leaders from destroying the planet. Celebrations were marked by music from the time prior intervention day. The broadcasts won the 1987 International Radio Festival of New York "Grand Award for Best Entertainment Program of the Year". World-wide competition included ABC, National Public Radio, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and the BBC.
Greenlee moved KADE and KBCO to a state of the art studio complex at 4801 Riverbend Road in East Boulder and then sold the stations to Noble Broadcasting in 1987. During this time of KBCO's history, deejays selected the songs to play on their own shows from a broad music library.
In 1982, KBCO was the first station in Colorado to play music from CDs. In a partnership with local audio retailer Listen Up, CDs and playback equipment were shipped in from Japan.
KBCO has occasionally been rated #1 in the Denver-Boulder Arbitron
ratings with overall listeners 12+, the first time in 1988. KBCO is often rated #1 with its target audience 25–54 year old adults. The station's sale to Clear Channel in the mid-1990s has resulted in a tightening of the formerly unpredictable format, and KBCO DJs no longer have control over any of the tracks they play except during special features. Music played on the air is chosen by the station's programming staff.
In 1988, KBCO Studio C was created by Program Director Scott Arbough with a performance by Melissa Etheridge
in a small cramped production studio. The studio has since upgraded, and many artists in Colorado for a concert tour or promotion tour stop by to play live on the radio. The station releases a CD every year in late November or early December with the best or most memorable Studio C performances. The CDs, titled KBCO Studio C followed by the volume number, sell out in a matter of hours and all proceeds from the album are donated to charity. Two retrospective CDs have been released combining the best of the previous CDs and a couple of unreleased songs.
KBCO carries the noncommercial show Etown
every Sunday. The show, hosted by Nick and Helen Forster, originates from Boulder and features live performances and an emphasis on environmental
issues.
playing only songs recorded in Studio C. The Studio C Channel is also available on KBCO's web site, along with the New Music Channel, an Internet channel playing 100% new releases.
Adult album alternative
Adult album alternative is a radio format. A spinoff from the album-oriented rock format, its roots trace to the 1960s and 1970s from the earlier freeform and progressive formats....
radio station
Radio station
Radio broadcasting is a one-way wireless transmission over radio waves intended to reach a wide audience. Stations can be linked in radio networks to broadcast a common radio format, either in broadcast syndication or simulcast or both...
licensed to Boulder, Colorado
Boulder, Colorado
Boulder is the county seat and most populous city of Boulder County and the 11th most populous city in the U.S. state of Colorado. Boulder is located at the base of the foothills of the Rocky Mountains at an elevation of...
, United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, that serves the Denver
Denver, Colorado
The City and County of Denver is the capital and the most populous city of the U.S. state of Colorado. Denver is a consolidated city-county, located in the South Platte River Valley on the western edge of the High Plains just east of the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains...
-Boulder
Boulder, Colorado
Boulder is the county seat and most populous city of Boulder County and the 11th most populous city in the U.S. state of Colorado. Boulder is located at the base of the foothills of the Rocky Mountains at an elevation of...
area. The station's format, dubbed "World Class Rock," is an eclectic variety of pop
Pop music
Pop music is usually understood to be commercially recorded music, often oriented toward a youth market, usually consisting of relatively short, simple songs utilizing technological innovations to produce new variations on existing themes.- Definitions :David Hatch and Stephen Millward define pop...
, rock
Rock music
Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music...
, blues
Blues
Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...
, reggae
Reggae
Reggae is a music genre first developed in Jamaica in the late 1960s. While sometimes used in a broader sense to refer to most types of Jamaican music, the term reggae more properly denotes a particular music style that originated following on the development of ska and rocksteady.Reggae is based...
and folk
Folk music
Folk music is an English term encompassing both traditional folk music and contemporary folk music. The term originated in the 19th century. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted by mouth, as music of the lower classes, and as music with unknown composers....
, from the late-1960s to the present.
The Clear Channel Communications
Clear Channel Communications
Clear Channel Communications, Inc. is an American media conglomerate company headquartered in San Antonio, Texas. It was founded in 1972 by Lowry Mays and Red McCombs, and was taken private by Bain Capital LLC and Thomas H. Lee Partners LP in a leveraged buyout in 2008...
outlet broadcasts with an effective radiated power
Effective radiated power
In radio telecommunications, effective radiated power or equivalent radiated power is a standardized theoretical measurement of radio frequency energy using the SI unit watts, and is determined by subtracting system losses and adding system gains...
of 100 kW. KBCO's studios are located on Boulder's renowned Pearl Street. The transmitter is located southwest of Eldorado Springs, Colorado
Eldorado Springs, Colorado
Eldorado Springs is a census-designated place in Boulder County, Colorado, United States. The population was 585 at the 2010 census. The Eldorado Springs Post Office has the ZIP Code 80025....
, at the top of Eldorado Mountain
Eldorado Mountain
Eldorado Mountain is located on the eastern edge of the Colorado Front Range. It is largely in Boulder County. But it straddles the border, and its southern flanks are located in Jefferson County...
at an elevation of 8,400 feet above sea level, or 469 meters above average terrain.
Scott Arbough, who started as a part time DJ at KBCO in 1985, is the current Program Director.
KBCO can also be heard via translator K232AC (94.3 FM) located west of Denver in Summit County
Summit County, Colorado
Summit County is the 19th most populous of the 64 counties of the state of Colorado of the United States. The county population was 23,538 at U.S. Census 2000. The county seat is Breckenridge...
on Baldy Mountain
Baldy Mountain
Baldy Mountain is the highest peak in Manitoba, Canada. It is located in the Duck Mountain Provincial Park, northwest of Dauphin. It is tall, making it the highest mountain in the long Manitoba Escarpment....
.
History
KBCO, whose slogan is "World Class Rock," has been in the adult rock format since its sign on in June 1977. The format on the station was derived in part from Boulder station KADE (1190 AM) which had gone on the air in 1973. KADE was purchased in 1975 by Bob Greenlee. Two years later Greenlee also purchased FM station KRNW, which then became KBCO. The original studio was located in an office complex at 1900 Folsom Street, next door to the station's current studio. The station's original transmitter was located on a tower atop Lee Hill with a low-power 610 watt signal. Bob Greenlee worked with consulting engineers and petitioned the FCC to increase the power to its current 100,000 watt signal.The original airstaff included Dennis Constantine, the station's original program director, in the mornings; Nick Frazer overnight, Music Director Judy McNutt and production director Richard Ray.
The freedom allowed to the airstaff in the early days bred exceptional creativity. The station produced an award winning series of yearly broadcasts, collectively known as "Intervention Day: Planet Earth's Premier Holiday." Intervention Day broadcasts were set in the future and celebrated the day the Inter-Galactic Community intervened to prevent Earth's leaders from destroying the planet. Celebrations were marked by music from the time prior intervention day. The broadcasts won the 1987 International Radio Festival of New York "Grand Award for Best Entertainment Program of the Year". World-wide competition included ABC, National Public Radio, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and the BBC.
Greenlee moved KADE and KBCO to a state of the art studio complex at 4801 Riverbend Road in East Boulder and then sold the stations to Noble Broadcasting in 1987. During this time of KBCO's history, deejays selected the songs to play on their own shows from a broad music library.
In 1982, KBCO was the first station in Colorado to play music from CDs. In a partnership with local audio retailer Listen Up, CDs and playback equipment were shipped in from Japan.
KBCO has occasionally been rated #1 in the Denver-Boulder Arbitron
Arbitron
Arbitron is a consumer research company in the United States that collects listener data on radio audiences. It was founded as American Research Bureau by Jim Seiler in 1949 and became national by merging with L.A. based Coffin, Cooper and Clay in the early 1950s...
ratings with overall listeners 12+, the first time in 1988. KBCO is often rated #1 with its target audience 25–54 year old adults. The station's sale to Clear Channel in the mid-1990s has resulted in a tightening of the formerly unpredictable format, and KBCO DJs no longer have control over any of the tracks they play except during special features. Music played on the air is chosen by the station's programming staff.
In 1988, KBCO Studio C was created by Program Director Scott Arbough with a performance by Melissa Etheridge
Melissa Etheridge
Melissa Lou Etheridge is an American rock singer-songwriter and musician.Etheridge is known for her mixture of confessional lyrics, pop-based folk-rock, and raspy, smoky vocals...
in a small cramped production studio. The studio has since upgraded, and many artists in Colorado for a concert tour or promotion tour stop by to play live on the radio. The station releases a CD every year in late November or early December with the best or most memorable Studio C performances. The CDs, titled KBCO Studio C followed by the volume number, sell out in a matter of hours and all proceeds from the album are donated to charity. Two retrospective CDs have been released combining the best of the previous CDs and a couple of unreleased songs.
KBCO carries the noncommercial show Etown
Etown (Radio)
eTown is a national, 5013 nonprofit, syndicated radio program, produced in Boulder, Colorado, and heard on National Public Radio, community radio stations, and commercial radio. The program has a variety show format that features live musical performances and interviews with musicians, authors,...
every Sunday. The show, hosted by Nick and Helen Forster, originates from Boulder and features live performances and an emphasis on environmental
Environmentalism
Environmentalism is a broad philosophy, ideology and social movement regarding concerns for environmental conservation and improvement of the health of the environment, particularly as the measure for this health seeks to incorporate the concerns of non-human elements...
issues.
HD Radio
In 2005, KBCO received an experimental permit from the FCC and became the first FM radio station in the state of Colorado to implement "Multicasting" a second program channel using the Ibquity Digital HD system. The station debuted a HD sub-channelHD Radio
HD Radio, which originally stood for "Hybrid Digital", is the trademark for iBiquity's in-band on-channel digital radio technology used by AM and FM radio stations to transmit audio and data via a digital signal in conjunction with their analog signals...
playing only songs recorded in Studio C. The Studio C Channel is also available on KBCO's web site, along with the New Music Channel, an Internet channel playing 100% new releases.