Magic 97.9 plays soft adult contemporary in Boise, Idaho today, but the frequency it sits on has carried three completely different identities since 1960, including three decades as one of the region's dominant country stations and an even earlier life under religious ownership.
Signed On by a Church-Owned Broadcaster
The station first went on air on November 1, 1960, as KBOI-FM, the FM counterpart to AM station KBOI. Both were owned by Boise Valley Broadcasters, a company that was, according to station records, a subsidiary of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which held and later divested its stock in the venture. KBOI-FM spent its first years simulcasting KBOI's middle-of-the-road mix of popular music, news and sports before breaking off in the late 1960s with its own beautiful music format, built around instrumental cover versions of pop songs and Broadway show tunes.
Three Decades as Boise's Country Station
Everything changed on January 1, 1986, when the call letters switched to KQFC and the station relaunched as "98 Country." That country identity proved durable. Cumulus Media acquired the station from Citadel Broadcasting in October 2011, rebranded it "Nash FM 97.9" in 2013 under the Nash network, then dropped that branding in 2017 for a classic country format instead. For more than 30 years running, whatever the specific branding, this frequency was Boise's country outlet.
A Format Borrowed From Bigger Markets
The country era ended on October 14, 2019, when Cumulus flipped the station to soft adult contemporary as Magic 97.9. The move wasn't a local experiment. According to local reporting on the switch, the Soft AC format had already scored strong ratings for Cumulus in much larger markets, San Francisco and Seattle among them, and Boise became the next city where the company bet the same warm, low-tempo playlist could find an audience.
One Tower, Three Very Different Boise Stations
From church-affiliated middle-of-the-road programming, to beautiful music, to three decades of country, to a Soft AC import from bigger coastal markets, the frequency now known as Magic 97.9 has rarely stayed still for long. Its current cozy, low-key format is really just the latest chapter on a signal that has reinvented itself roughly every generation since 1960.