This station first began broadcasting in 1926 as KGBX on 1040 kHz in St. Joseph, Missouri. The station was set up by entrepreneur Ralph D. Foster and partner Jerry Hall at the Foster-Hall Tire Co. to advertise their Firestone Tire dealership. By mid-1930 KGBX had changed frequencies to 1310 kHz and by mid-1931 the station had been sold to KGBX Inc. In 1932, after the partnership dissolved, KGBX relocated to Springfield, Missouri, and by 1942 had changed frequencies to the current 1260 kHz. In 1944, KGBX was acquired by the Springfield Broadcasting Company. This new company was under the ownership of the publishers of the Springfield News & Leader and Springfield Leader & Press daily newspapers.
An era of change
After more than three decades of continuous ownership, Springfield Broadcasting Company sold KGBX to Stauffer Communications, Inc., on May 13, 1977. In January 1983, Stauffer Communications, Inc., reached an agreement to sell the station to Springcom, Inc. The deal was approved by the FCC on February 25, 1983, and the transaction was consummated on March 8, 1983. In February 1986, Springcom, Inc., contracted to sell the station to KGBX Communications, Inc. The deal was approved by the FCC on March 18, 1986, and the transaction was consummated on April 7, 1986. This ownership would prove short-lived as KGBX Communications, Inc., made a deal in August 1987 to sell this station to Springfield Great Empire Broadcasting, Inc. While approval for the sale was pending, the station applied to the Federal Communications Commission for a new callsign and was assigned KTTS on September 14, 1987. The deal was approved by the FCC on September 29, 1987. In October 1998, after a number of internal shifts in the ownership of the license holder, Springfield Great Empire Broadcasting, Inc., agreed to transfer the broadcast license for KTTS to Great Empire Broadcasting, Inc. The deal was approved by the FCC on October 26, 1998, and the transaction was consummated on June 30, 1999. This too would prove a short-lived change.
The present
Great Empire Broadcasting, Inc., reached an agreement in July 1999 to sell this station to Journal Broadcast Corporation. The deal was approved by the FCC on July 20, 1999, and the transaction was consummated on July 27, 1999. The new owners applied to the FCC for new call letters and the station was assigned KTTF on April 18, 2001. The station was assigned the current KSGF call letters by the FCC on June 14, 2002. Journal Communications and the E. W. Scripps Company announced on July 30, 2014 that the two companies would merge to create a new broadcast company under the E.W. Scripps Company name that owned the two companies' broadcast properties, including KSGF. The transaction was completed in 2015, pending shareholder and regulatory approvals. Scripps exited radio in 2018; the Springfield stations went to SummitMedia in a four-market, $47 million deal completed on November 1, 2018.
