KHTK

KHTK first signed on the air on November 12, 1926.[4] It carried the call sign KGDM. The station was originally owned by Hercules Broadcasting, licensed to Stockton, California, and operating at 1130 kHz with 1,000 watts of power. Initially it was a daytimer, required to go off the air from sunset to sunrise.

The 1941 North American Regional Broadcasting Agreement required the station to move its frequency. KGDM switched to 1140 kHz with 5,000 watts, now authorized to broadcast full-time. By 1962, the station had changed its city of license to Sacramento, and moved to new facilities with 50,000 watts of power.

KGDM flipped to a country music format, and adopted the call letters KRAK. Some of the early personalities included "Oakie Paul" Westmoreland, Walt Shaw, and Dick Bains. With country music moving more into mainstream popularity during the 1970s, KRAK became one of the Sacramento area's most popular stations. Listeners were not only exposed to artists such as Johnny Cash, Dolly Parton, Waylon Jennings, and Willie Nelson, but enjoyed two decades of on-air personality stability. Joey Mitchell worked the 6:00 - 10:00AM "Drive Time" and was named "Sacramento Radio Personality of the Year" several times. Rick Stewart could be heard middays between 10:00 - 2:00PM. Big Jim Hall covered the 2:00 - 6:00PM "Afternoon Drive." Hal Murray worked evenings. Fred Hoffman hosted "Captain Fred's All-Night Truckin' Show. All had Top 40 backgrounds which led to a tighter, more upbeat format.

KRAK continued to broadcast into the 1990s, long after other music stations had switched to the FM band. KRAK-FM would eventually move ahead in the ratings, later becoming 105.1 KNCI through changes after a purchase by CBS Radio and frequency switching.

On February 28, 1994, KRAK became KHTK, a Hot Talk station, as "Hot Talk 1140." The call letters were chosen to reflect the Hot TalK format.[5] After a couple of years in the talk format, it flipped to its current all-sports format.[6] The call letters "KRAK" would make a brief return in the Sacramento media market as a country oldies station at AM 1470 before that station was sold to Radio Disney and is today KIID airing programming in Punjabi. Most recently, the KRAK call letters were assigned to the now-KMPS in Victor Valley, California, also owned by CBS and airing the CBS Sports Radio Network.[7]

KHTK was originally branded as "Sports 1140" before adopting "The Fan" branding in November 2011. On January 1, 2013, KHTK began to identify itself as "CBS Sports 1140." On July 1, 2013, 6 months after identifying as "CBS Sports 1140," KHTK switched its branding back to "KHTK Sports 1140", then to "Sports 1140 KHTK". One of KHTK's initial sports hosts was Pro Football Hall of Famer Jack Youngblood, who co-hosted with Mike Remy, the station's former program director.

On July 31, 2008, the CBS Corporation announced that KHTK and its five sister stations in Sacramento were being put up for sale as part of the planned divestiture of radio stations outside the top-15 U.S. radio markets. But it remained part of the CBS Radio family for nearly a decade.

On February 2, 2017, CBS Radio announced it would merge with Entercom which locally owned KKDO, KUDL, KSEG, KRXQ, and KIFM. The company formerly owned 107.9 KDND until it shut the station down and turned in its license to the Federal Communications Commission two days later.[8] On October 10, CBS Radio announced that as part of the process of obtaining regulatory approval of the merger, KHTK would be one of sixteen stations that would be divested by Entercom, along with sister stations KYMX, KZZO, and KNCI. 102.5 KSFM would be retained by Entercom.[9]

On November 1, Entercom announced that Bonneville International would begin operating KHTK, KYMX, KZZO and KNCI via a local marketing agreement (LMA) when the merger of CBS and Entercom closed on November 17, while their licenses were placed into a divestiture trust pending a sale to a different owner within 180 days.[10][11][12] On August 3, 2018, Bonneville announced it would buy the stations outright in a $141 million deal.[13] The sale was completed on September 21, 2018.[14]

Former KHTK afternoon host and Kings play-by-play announcer Grant Napear was a staple of the station's programming from 1997 until 2020. But in June 2020, Bonneville fired Napear for insensitive remarks towards former Kings player DeMarcus Cousins in a series of Twitter feeds regarding the Black Lives Matter movement.[15]