Celebrating 75 years of KRMG on Tulsa radio

KRMG signed onto the air at 740 Kilohertz on the AM dial December 31st, 1949.

The station was founded by Robert S. Kerr and Dean McGee.

Kerr was Oklahoma’s 12th governor and later became a U.S. senator. McGee was a lifelong oilman who partnered with Kerr to form the Kerr-McGee Oil Company. The KRMG call letters represent the two names “Kerr” and “McGee.”

The station rose to prominence for its coverage of major weather events like the 1957 Tulsa flood and 1974 tornadoes. Later, the station was lauded for its continuous breaking news coverage of the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995.

KRMG became known as a trustworthy and reliable source for severe weather coverage and has long been recognized as a dependable source for real-time and accurate traffic information.

In the early days, KRMG played big band music and featured news at the top of the hour.

The popular ‘Johnny Martin Show’ ran at night from February 1963 until June 1978.

The station began to play adult contemporary music in the 1970s and started airing talk shows in the 1980s.

In the 1990s, KRMG began its shift to a full-time news/talk station.

National talk show hosts on KRMG over the years include: Paul Harvey, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Neal Boortz, Herman Cain, Clark Howard and many more. Today, KRMG features Brian Kilmeade, Erick Erickson, Sean Hannity, Jimmy Failla, Markley Van Camp, & Robbins, Tony Katz and Dana Loesch.

Since 1976, there have only been three hosts of the morning show on KRMG. Dan Potter has hosted since 2012, Joe Kelley hosted from 2005 to 2012 and John Erling from 1976 to 2005.

The popular ‘Erling in the Morning’ was the station’s longest-running local program.

To mark KRMG’s 75th anniversary, KRMG Morning News Host Dan Potter sat down with John Erling, former news director John Durkee and former morning producer Denver Foxx to discuss some of the station’s major milestones.

Listen to the KRMG 75th Anniversary Special here

PHOTOS: KRMG through the years

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