KID (AM)

KID (590 kHz) was a commercial AM radio station located in Idaho Falls, Idaho, broadcasting on 590 AM. KID aired news/talk programming, which included syndicated programs like Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, and Ben Shapiro.

History
The station was first licensed, as KGIO, on November 11, 1928, on a frequency of 1320 kHz, and began broadcasting on December 3, 1928. The original call letters were randomly assigned from an alphabetical list of available call signs, and were changed to KID on February 16, 1929. In March 1941, most of the stations on 1320 kHz, including KID, moved to 1350 kHz, with the implementation of the North American Regional Broadcasting Agreement. In 1950, KID changed to its final frequency 590 kHz.

In October 2007, a deal was reached for KID to be acquired by GAP Broadcasting II LLC (Samuel Weller, president) from Clear Channel Communications as part of a 57-station deal with a total reported sale price of $74.78 million. What eventually became GapWest Broadcasting was folded into Townsquare Media on August 13, 2010; Townsquare, in turn, sold its Idaho Falls–Pocatello stations to Rich Broadcasting in 2011.

In its final years, KID simulcast its programming on two FM stations, KIDJ in Sugar City (serving Idaho Falls and Rexburg) and KIDG in Pocatello. They served to fill in gaps in the AM station's nighttime signal. KID operated at 5,000 watts during the day, but was required to drop to 1,000 watts at night.

The station went off the air in November 2021, when a farmer accidentally knocked down one of the station's transmission towers in Iona, Idaho. Rich Broadcasting applied for an insurance settlement, only to find out that the farmer, who claimed ownership of the property that KID was leasing for the transmitter, had collected the insurance payment. Rich Broadcasting hired an attorney to dispute the farmer's claims but, in the meantime, the farmer demolished two remaining towers on the site as well as the transmitter building, and also removed all broadcasting equipment. Rich Broadcasting determined that it would have cost between $1.5 and $2 million to keep the FCC license, build a new facility and replace the destroyed equipment, in addition to the cost of leasing a new property. Concluding that he could not justify the expense, company president Rich Mecham decided to not return to AM broadcasting and returned the 590 AM license to the Federal Communications Commission. Rich Broadcasting surrendered the KID license on February 23, 2023; the FCC cancelled it on March 3. The station's former schedule continued to be broadcast on KIDJ and KIDG.