The station signed on the air on August 15, 1986; 38 years ago (1986-08-15).[3] The original call sign was KROL and its city of license was Laughlin. It was founded by "Laughlin Roughrider Broadcasting" and it operated from two tower sites. A three-tower array was built in Laughlin for a 10,000 watt day and 1,000 watt night operation, using a directional antenna system. The other site was near Henderson and was the KROL experimental synchronous transmitter, using a non-directional antenna by day and a three-tower directional system by night.
After KVEG 840 AM {now KXNT) went on the air, measurements were made showing that a power increase would not cause prohibited overlap with KROL on 870 AM. This allowed KROL an increase to 5,000 watts days but still at 500 watts nights. Both sites used diesel generators to produce all of the power that was needed to broadcast.
Spanish hits
The stations were sold to Million Dollar Broadcasting and changed their call sign to KOWA, known as "The Cow". Heftel Broadcasting bought the station in 1995 and changed to a format of Spanishhits.
Management at HBC were concerned that the bulk of population covered by KOWA was from the second transmitter in the Las Vegas area. This coverage was licensed as a secondary authorization, and was subject to cancellation with little or no prior notice. David Stewart at HBC Engineering found a way to make the northern signal the main (and only site). The city of license was changed from Laughlin to Whitney (which combined some of unincorporated Clark County with the former village of East Las Vegas). The former main transmitter site in Laughlin was decommissioned. The Laughlin towers are used by other area stations, including radio stations KFLG and KZZZ, and, at one time, the analog operation of KMCC.
KLSQ went silent in late 2019. On December 12, 2020, KLSQ resumed broadcasting as a simulcast of 103.5 KISF's Regional Mexican format. It has since switched back to Spanish sports under a different network, TUDN Radio.
Latino Media Network
On June 3, 2022, Univision announced it would sell a package of 18 radio stations across ten of its markets, primarily AM outlets in large cities (including KLSQ) and entire clusters in smaller markets such as McAllen, Texas, and Fresno, California. The price tag was $60 million. The owner would be a new company known as the Latino Media Network (LMN). Univision proposed to handle operations for a year under agreement before turning over operational control to LMN in the fourth quarter of 2023.[5]
