KIXI (880 AM) is a radio station licensed to Mercer Island/Seattle, Washington. It operates 24 hours a day with a daytime power of 50,000 watts and a nighttime power of 10,000 watts from a transmitter in Mercer Slough Nature Park in Bellevue, where studios are also located (although in a separate location). Format KIXI features nostalgic music, such as big band and musical standards. It is the only station in the Seattle area to feature the Imagination Theatre and Twilight Zone radio dramas. KIXI remains one of the few AM radio stations that continues to successfully program music on the AM band. It also enjoys some of the highest ratings of any "Nostalgia" formatted station in the US. On June 1, 2006, KIXI started to carry the nationally syndicated format Music of Your Life format from Jones Radio Networks. Jones stopped carrying Music of Your Life via satellite in January 2008 in favor of its own standards format, called "Jones Standards" (which has since been discontinued and absorbed into Dial Global's America's Best Music network). However, KIXI remained until April 2009 an affiliate of Music of Your Life, now distributed by Planet Halo, Incorporated. The station was the first AM station in Seattle to transmit its signal in IBOC digital radio during a joint demonstration with Harris Corporation and iBiquity, the licensee of the new digital AM transmission method. KIXI can also be heard in HD Radio on KRWM 106.9 FM HD2. History KIXI took the air in 1947 as KXRN, a 250-watt Renton station broadcasting at 1220 kHz during daytime hours only. KXRN was owned by the Interlake Broadcasting Company. It was built by Frank C. Cook, who was also the radio announcer. In 1951, the station moved to 1230 kHz and changed its call letters to KLAN a year later. KLAN became a full-time station broadcasting with 1,000 watts at 910 kHz in 1957. Purchased the following year by former KRSC and KJR personality Wally Nelskog, the station became top-40 KQDE, or "Cutie Radio." A sister station on 1230 kHz in Everett, KQTY, also used the same branding. One of Seattle's first black deejays, Bob Summarise, brought an R&B influence to his airshift on KQDE. (Summarise would later own soul-formatted KYAC, which took the air in 1964.) In 1960, KQDE would change its call letters to the more phonetic KUDY and changed its city of license to Seattle.