KHHM - History - As KBMB "103.5 The Bomb"

As KBMB "103.5 The Bomb"

The station debuted with a Regional Mexican format in 1996 as KRYR and then switched to a Urban Contemporary direction during the wave of Hip-Hop/R&B stations that sprang up nationally in the late 1990s. The calls changed to KBMB with the moniker "The Bomb", and the programming focused on targeting the largely ignored hip hop community. Reflecting the market's demographics, 7% of the Sacramento radio market is African American, so although the station was the only Black-owned station (Diamond Broadcasting, the original license holder) at the time, it relied primarily on white females 18–34 for its ratings and commercial appeal. While it was marketed as a Rhythmic/CHR in 1998 as a way to target beyond the core audience and to attract more mainstream advertisers to the station, it managed to maintain an unofficial urban format through its music selection. It was the home of the syndicated Doug Banks Morning Show, making KBMB one of few urban stations in the West Coast to carry a syndicated morning show. It also carried the Tom Joyner Morning Show for a short period upon the station's debut.

In its early days, KBMB once had personalities like former Program Directors Randy "Jayare" Johnson (who hosted locally oriented hip hop shows "the Basement" and "Ground Zero and is now a member of the hip hop group Beataroundabush) and Ibrahim "E-Bro" Darden (who is the current program director at WQHT Hot 97 in New York) and Deshawn "D-Funk" Robertson, Host of the highest rated Afternoon Drive-Time show in the station's history, "The Afternoon Flava Show" (He is currently a professional stand-up comedian). From its inception, the station competed fiercely for ratings with heritage competitor KSFM for the very lucrative 18–34 female demographic. The station was committed to Sacramento community causes, as well as its inclusion of urban-leaning artists that traditionally were seldom heard on Sacramento radio. Though competing with an undersized signal which was originally 3 kW but later upped to 6 kW, the upstart station gave heritage KSFM (50 kW) a run for its money in the ratings. It even gained competition from KHYL in 2001 upon that station's format change from oldies to Gold-oldies leaning R&B.

But in 2004, after years of litigation between the station's majority owner, Paula Nelson (the last local station owner, and the only African American station owner in Sacramento) and Bustos Media, the station was forcibly sold to Entravision communications, a predominantly Spanish language corporate entity. Johnson, Nelson, and all other managers were terminated, and the management team of the local Entravision cluster assumed the reins, despite the abysmal ratings at Entravision's existing properties. Almost immediately the format was constrained in a failed attempt to compete with KSFM and pop rival KDND more directly.

After Entravision acquired KBMB, the officials systematically went about disassembling the predominantly African American air staff. The sentiments expressed by Entravision head of Radio programming Jeff Lieberman were that the station was just too ethnic to compete in Sacramento (these, despite the Bomb's history of ratings success with a predominantly African American cast of characters). A pronounced push to make the station more Latin oriented began with the hiring of a nearly all Latin air staff and the infusion of Spanish into the station's imaging. The longtime urban contemporary format was permanently gravitated to a rhythmic format. The Doug Banks Show was dropped in favor of a locally based morning show, but KBMB returned to a syndicated morning show with Big Boy's Neighborhood, before that, too, was dropped when the urban-turned-rhythmic format on KBMB ran its course in 2009.