Weekends feature shows on money, health, the outdoors, guns, car repair and travel, some of which are paid brokered programming.

KFBK was first licensed, as the city's second broadcasting station, on August 16, 1922, to the Kimball-Upson Company,[16] and initially was operated in conjunction with the Bee's primary competitor, the Sacramento Union.

The call letters were sequentially assigned from an alphabetic list maintained by the Department of Commerce, which regulated radio in the United States at this time.

[20] In May 1923 the Department of Commerce greatly expanded the number of broadcasting station frequencies,[21] and later that year KFBK was assigned unlimited use of 1060 kHz.

[22] A series of reassignments followed, until November 11, 1928, when, under the provisions of Commerce's General Order 40, the station was assigned to a low-powered "Local" frequency, 1310 kHz.

In 1925 the Sacramento Bee saw this as an opportunity to re-enter the broadcasting field which it had left nearly three years earlier when it had shut down KVQ, but now on a commercial basis.

In the 1950's, McClatchy also owned KMJ (AM, FM, TV) Fresno, KOH Reno, and KERN Bakersfield (White's Radio log et al).

In March 1941, under the provisions of the North American Regional Broadcasting Agreement, KFBK and WCKY shifted to 1530 kHz, a frequency designated as a "Clear Channel" assignment, with both stations now classified as "Class I-B".

[27] On October 2, 1948, KFBK increased its power to 50,000 watts, concurrent with the installation of a directional antenna to limit its signal toward WCKY.

Because of its strong signal and location in the heart of the Central Valley, the station became the chief source for farmers to obtain weather reports and price and other farming information.

Beginning on January 4, 1960, KFBK carried CBS Radio Network programming,[30] including top-of-the-hour newscasts, plus specialized reports from Edward R. Murrow and Lowell Thomas.

After a brief trial as an adult contemporary music station, ownership committed themselves to a format that included news blocks during morning and afternoon drive time, with the remainder of the day's programming featuring local talk shows.

With the U.S. Federal Communications Commission implementing a newspaper-broadcasting cross-ownership rule, McClatchy was forced to divest itself of its radio and television stations.

Beginning December 26, 2013, KFBK briefly operated a trimulcast, adding 93.1 FM, the former home of "Classic 93.1" (KHLX); this ended a week later when KGBY adopted a country music format as KBEB.