KSCO (1080 kHz) is a commercial AM radio station broadcasting a talk radio format. The station is owned by Zwerling Broadcasting and is licensed to Santa Cruz, California. The radio studios and offices are on Portola Drive in Santa Cruz. The station can be heard over much of Central California during the day. By day, KSCO broadcasts at 10,000 watts non-directional. Because 1080 AM is a clear channel frequency reserved for KRLD Dallas and WTIC Hartford, at sunset, to avoid interference, KSCO reduces power to 5,000 watts and uses a directional antenna. KSCO also has three translator stations to broadcast its programming on the FM dial. History KSCO signed on the air on September 21, 1947. It originally was powered at 1,000 watts by day and 500 watts at night and was housed in a distinctive art deco building, which was constructed for the station, and still broadcasts there today. The founder was Charles Vernon Berlin, who also served as General Manager and Chief Engineer. In 1962, he added 99.1 KSCO-FM (now KSQL). In 1986, Berlin sold KSCO-AM-FM to Fuller-Jeffrey Broadcasting which owned numerous stations around the country. The AM station went to an automated format of adult standards. On March 10, 1987, KSCO-FM changed its call letters to KLRS (Colors) and its format to a new-age music format, the first station in North America to do so, with Mark Hammond as program director and Jay Peterson music director Since 1991, KSCO has been owned by the Zwerling family and has a talk radio format format. The Zwerlings later acquired another local AM station, 1340 KOMY. Both Michael and his mother Kay Zwerling took an active role in the station with the former regularly hosting the call-in show Saturday Special and the latter writing and voicing politically conservative commentaries on a variety of topics, especially politics and current events. On January 3, 2017 Kay Zwerling died at 95 years old. On September 25, 2006, the offices of KSCO and KOMY received an envelope containing white powder. The envelope, which had no return address and contained no letter, was addressed to "AUNTIE KSCO" in handwriting described by Program Director Rosemary Chalmers as "chicken-scratch." Emergency response teams arrived on scene, and all KSCO personnel in the building were evacuated by a HazMat crew. By the evening of Tuesday, September 26, an FBI lab had determined that the powder was inert, and KSCO/KOMY's