# KSTE

KSTE (650 AM) is a commercial radio station broadcasting a talk radio format. Licensed to Rancho Cordova, California, the station serves the Sacramento metropolitan area. The station is owned by iHeartMedia. Its lineup features shows from Westwood One, Radio America, Compass Media Networks, and Premiere Networks, a subsidiary of iHeartMedia. KSTE is also the flagship station for the Athletics baseball team during the team's stint in West Sacramento. The studios and offices are in North Sacramento near the Arden Fair Mall.
KSTE transmits with 21,400 watts by day, but because 650 AM is a clear channel frequency reserved for Class A station WSM in Nashville, Tennessee, KSTE must reduce power at night to 920 watts to avoid interfering with WSM and other stations on its frequency. It uses a directional antenna at all times with a two-tower array in the daytime and a three-tower array at night. The transmitter is southeast of the city in Vineyard, California.
The station went on the air in 1991. Initially a Spanish-language station simulcasting KRCX under the call signs KMCE and KRDX, the talk format and KSTE call sign launched in 1992 after Fuller-Jeffrey Broadcasting, which had already programmed the station, bought full control. A series of ownership changes in 1996 and 1997 put KSTE under the ownership of first American Radio Systems and then Chancellor Media; additional mergers in the late 1990s led to Clear Channel Communications, the predecessor to iHeartMedia, taking over the station in 2000.

## Programming
### Schedule

KSTE is programmed as a "second tier" talk station, secondary to its more dominant sister stations, 1530 KFBK and 93.1 KFBK-FM. While most of the KFBK schedule is hosted by local personalities, KSTE features nationally syndicated talk shows. Weekday mornings begin with Armstrong & Getty, a wake-up show that airs nationally but is based at KSTE. They are followed by Chad Benson, Sean Hannity, Erick Erickson, Glenn Beck, Jesse Kelly, Joe Pags and Michael DelGiorno.
Weekends feature shows on money, health and cars, as well as some paid brokered programming. KSTE carries some syndicated shows on weekends including Bill Handel on the Law, Rich DeMuro on Tech, America at Night with Rich Valdés, The Jesus Christ Show with Neil Saavedra and Sunday Nights with Bill Cunningham, as well as repeats of weekday shows.

### Armstrong & Getty

Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty joined KSTE in 1998 and now have one of the highest rated morning radio shows in Northern California. They can also be heard on radio stations in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Honolulu and other cities in the West. Armstrong & Getty is the only locally based weekday talk show on KSTE.

### News

For a number of years, KSTE aired hourly CNN Radio newscasts from Westwood One, and later Dial Global. On March 2, 2012, Dial Global announced it would discontinue distributing newscasts from CNN Radio and instead replace it with NBC News Radio. CNN Radio affiliates would be switched to NBC on April 1, 2012. However, KSTE became an affiliate of the CBS Radio Network prior to the switchover. The station carried CBS News at the beginning of most hours.
In 2017, KSTE became an affiliate of a new version of NBC News Radio owned by iHeartMedia (unrelated to the Westwood One/Dial Global version); the station has since rejoined CBS News Radio. KSTE also airs some programming and news from ABC News Radio.

### Sports

KSTE was the former home of the Sacramento River Cats baseball team, before it moved to KIFM.
On February 14, 2025, the Athletics (A's) baseball team announced that KSTE would be the team's flagship station, following their temporary move from Oakland to West Sacramento as part of their long-term relocation to Las Vegas. In addition to KSTE, games are aired on the "A's Cast" stream on iHeartRadio and on the A's Radio Network. KSTE replaced KHTK as the A's Sacramento radio outlet; the move also resulted in KAHI in Auburn and KESP in Modesto being dropped as network affiliates.

## History

The station that today is KSTE was first planned on April 10, 1981, when Minority Communications of California filed an application for a music and talk station on 650 kHz in Rancho Cordova. Minority's principals—Mary Forbes, Paul Neuhoff, and Robert W. O'Leary—also owned WQIZ and WDWQ in St. George, South Carolina. The construction permit was given the call sign KMCE in 1987. The station signed on the air in April 1991 as a Spanish-language outlet, simulcasting KRCX (1110 AM). While still owned by Minority Communications of California, KMCE was programmed by Fuller-Jeffrey Broadcasting, owner of KRCX and KRXQ (93.7 FM) in Roseville, under a time brokerage agreement. The call sign was changed to KRDX that June.
The station was sold to Fuller-Jeffrey Broadcasting in December 1992 for $1 million; the deal was originally reached in 1991. The acquisition required a waiver of Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ownership rules because of the overlap of the signals of KMCE, KRCX, and KSRO in Santa Rosa, as well as plans to sell KRCX. Ahead of the sale's completion, in November 1992, the call sign was changed to KSTE and the format switched to news/talk, carrying ABC News Radio for hourly newscasts.
In April 1996, Fuller-Jeffrey agreed to sell KSTE to American Radio Systems (ARS) for $7.25 million; ARS was also in the process of acquiring KCTC and KYMX at the time. That June, ARS turned around and swapped KSTE, along with $33 million, to Chancellor Broadcasting—owner of KFBK, KGBY, and KHYL—in exchange for WEAT, WEAT-FM, and WOLL in West Palm Beach, Florida. The sale was completed in October 1997, by which time Chancellor Broadcasting had itself merged with Evergreen Media to form Chancellor Media.
Chancellor Media and Capstar Broadcasting announced in August 1998 that they would merge (Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst was a major shareholder in both companies); upon the merger's completion in July 1999, the combined company was named AMFM Inc. AMFM was in turn acquired by Clear Channel Communications (forerunner to iHeartMedia) in a deal announced on October 4, 1999, and completed in August 2000. Through these ownership changes, KSTE's talk format remained in place, making it a rare radio station that, except for its first two years, has remained with the same format for its entire history.