KJLH
KJLH (102.3 FM) is an Urban Adult Contemporary radio station serving the Los Angeles area. It plays R&B and classic soul music under the format, and occasionally plays some Hip-Hop, Gospel and Smooth Jazz tracks. Licensed to the Los Angeles suburb of Compton, California, the station is owned by Taxi Productions, which in turn is owned by Stevie Wonder. It operates with an effective radiated power of 5.6 kW from a transmitter site in a portion of unincorporated Los Angeles County in View Park-Windsor Hills, and operates from its studios in Inglewood.
History
KJLH, whose signal was originally licensed to Long Beach, California, but relocated to Compton, debuted with a R&B format in 1979, the year Stevie Wonder purchased the station from its original owner, John Lamar Hill, thus the call letter's origins. It was Wonder who gave KJLH its on-air slogan to match the call letters, which stand for "Kindness, Joy, Love & Happiness."
During its first eight years, KJLH enjoyed modest success as a R&B/Urban station and a great familiarity with the African-American community. But it was hampered by the fact that the station was on a Class-A FM signal, which meant their signal was limited to the central and southern portions of Los Angeles County (Including Downtown and South Central Los Angeles), while in other areas like the San Fernando Valley the signal would either fade out or be scratchy, depending on where you would hear the station (despite a signal upgrade from 2.25 kW to 5.6 kW in 2000). They were also (at the time, from the late 1970s up to the late 1980s) one of five R&B/Urban stations in the market who targeted the African-American community during its tenure, along with AMs KGFJ and KDAY, and FMs KACE and KUTE. Of the four that since flipped formats, only the KDAY calls have since been revived, but on the FM side as the market's only Urban/Hip-Hop station to date, and like KJLH, they also have limited signal coverage.