KGMI

KGMI
City Bellingham, Washington
Broadcast area Whatcom County
Branding 790 KGMI
Slogan News Talk Radio
Frequency 790 kHz
Translator(s) 96.5 K243BX (Bellingham)
First air date 1926 (as KVOS, in Seattle; moved to Bellingham in 1927)
Format News/Talk
Power 5,000 watts (day)
1,000 watts (night)
Class B
Facility ID 34467
Transmitter coordinates 48°43′9″N 122°26′43″W / 48.71917°N 122.44528°W / 48.71917; -122.44528 (KGMI Tower)
Former callsigns KVOS (1926-1962)
Affiliations ABC Radio
Owner Saga Communications
(Saga Broadcasting, LLC)
Sister stations KBAI, KPUG, KISM, KAFE
Webcast Listen Live
Website kgmi.com

KGMI (790 AM) is a radio station broadcasting a news/talk and information format. Licensed to Bellingham, Washington, the station is owned and operated by Saga Broadcasting, dba Cascade Radio Group.

KGMI serves Northwest Washington with a signal that reaches into much of southwestern British Columbia, including Vancouver and Victoria. It and also reaches into Seattle's northern suburbs, the Olympic Peninsula.

History

KGMI signed on in 1926 from Seattle as KVOS, owned by Lou Kessler. It moved to Bellingham a year later. In 1928, Aberdeen businessman Rogan Jones bought the station.[1]

In 1933, Jones began airing news bulletins from the Associated Press under the moniker "Newspaper of the Air." The AP obtained a restraining order, but federal judge John Clyde Bowen refused to grant a permanent injunction, saying that news reports belong to the public.[2] Bowen's decision was reversed on appeal, prompting Jones to appeal to the Supreme Court. In 1936, the Supreme Court threw out the restraining order on the grounds that since the AP was a nonprofit organization, it couldn't incur damages.[3] The case established that radio (and later, television) stations had the same right to news reports as newspapers.[1]

Jones signed on the area's first television station, KVOS-TV, in 1953. He sold it in 1962, but kept the radio station, changing its call letters to the current KGMI and holding onto it until his death in 1972. The station went through several more owners before Saga purchased it.

References

  1. 1 2 Southcott, Bonnie Hart. Radio battled for access to news. The Bellingham Herald, 2008-01-09.
  2. ↑ The Press: Property & Pirates. Time, 1934-12-31.
  3. ↑ The Press: A. P. v. Coffee-Pot. Time, 1936-12-28.

External links

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