Today marks a century since 950 KPRC AM first took to the airwaves, beginning its broadcast journey on May 9, 1925, making it Houston's oldest radio station.
A Dallas Morning News article from June 28, 1925, reported on how WFAA radio's Charles F. Baker had been in Houston helping former WFAA engineer George Edward Zimmerman, who was supervising the new KPRC.
“Houston is a Main Street town, with the Rice Hotel at one end of the street and Rice Institute at the other," Baker told the Dallas Morning News in 1925. "Station KPRC is very pretty and convenient. The studio, on the roof, may be opened on all sides. It gets abundant air. It gets, on occasion, the roar of trains, the whistles and the bells adding realism to the station motto, ‘Kotton Port, Railway Center.’ Houston is a real ‘seaport and wonderful business city.’”
Initially transmitting at 1010 kilocycles per second (kc), the station shifted to its now-familiar 950 frequency in 1941. Its debut broadcast began with the words: “Hello, folks, everywhere.”
KPRC was founded by the Houston Post-Dispatch—later renamed the Houston Post—much like its sister station, 740 KTRH, which was later launched by rival newspaper, the Houston Chronicle.
The station’s call letters, KPRC, stand for Kotton Port Rail Center, a nod to Houston’s booming cotton, shipping, and rail industries at the time. The word "cotton" was intentionally spelled with a "K" to match federal rules requiring stations west of the Mississippi River to begin their call signs with that letter, while those east of the river typically begin with “W”.
Early programming was a mix of live music, comedy, sermons, children’s shows, poetry readings, weather updates, time signals, and news. In 1927, KPRC made headlines when it began airing police dispatches for the Houston Police Department—a groundbreaking public service at the time.
On December 24, 1946, KPRC expanded into FM radio with the debut of KPRC-FM, which would eventually evolve into today’s SUNNY 99.1 KODA.
In 1950, the Post extended its broadcasting presence into television, purchasing KLEE-TV and rebranding it as KPRC-TV. For decades, KPRC’s radio and TV operations shared facilities until the Hobby family, longtime owners, sold the stations in the mid-1990s.
Now, the station is owned by iHeartRadio, with Michael Garfield, The High Tech Texan, serving as the station's longest-running host.
