Audacity sports talk station KWFN 97.3 FM applied last week to relocate from the KOGO tower to the KGB-FM tower one mile to the northwest. The Minor Modification app is the first sign that Vertical Bridge intends to go through with its sale of the property under the historic towers at KOGO 600 in Emerald Hills. If approved, KWFN would share an antenna with KGB-FM 101.5 and radiate 38 kW horizontal and vertical polarity.
Though they haven’t yet filed an application, KOGO (AM) 600 is expected to move to the KGB-AM site in west Santee along highway CA-52. KLNV 106.5 will also need to move but has not yet filed to do so.
KRPE-LD San Diego, low power TV channel 6, atop Mt. San Miguel, is the first local station to broadcast ATSC 3.0, marketed as “NextGen”. The FCC granted a Special Temporary Authorization (STA) for a signal that includes an innovative analog FM carrier at 87.75 MHz. According to Director of Engineering Daniel Bissett, licensee Venture Technologies Group, LLC completed construction of the new signal on October 7, 2021.
On August 30, 2021, the FCC canceled the expired Construction Permit of proposed AM 1400 broadcaster KJUX Lemon Grove. The associated FM translator K229DP CP expires October 2, 2021.
The applicant, Gerard Turro of Christyanna Broadcasting, Inc., in June this year had requested a tolling (legal extension) of their CP deadline citing financing issues and delays in construction. However, the FCC rejected their arguments and ultimately, the request to extend the CP deadline.
Christyanna engaged in a long battle to gain the Construction Permit beginning with the application in 2007. Gold Coast Broadcasting, owners of co-channel station KUNX 1400 Santa Paula, filed numerous Petitions to Deny. Ultimately, KJUX won a construction permit but did not build the facility.
The FCC on August 10, 2021 canceled the license of KTCD-LP by request of station owner Entravision, who chose to let the license lapse rather than upgrade it to a digital facility before the June 13, 2021 deadline. KTCD had operated on analog TV channel 46 from Mt. Woodson with a very low power service to Ramona, but had obtained an FCC Construction Permit to allow it to change to channel 31 after having been displaced in the 2017 600 MHz band repack due to the sale of spectrum to T-Mobile and other mobile carriers.
The station had reached an agreement with International Communications Network, operators of KSDY-LD on Mt. San Miguel to share channel 31, with KSDY using a directional antenna array aimed at Chula Vista and Tijuana to the southwest and KTCD non-directional but using only 140 W ERP from atop Mt. Woodson. KTCD-LP went dark in mid-2020 after telecom operators began claiming their auctioned 600 MHz spectrum.
Activist San Diego (“ASD”), licensees of a new non-comm FM station, KUMI 89.9 Romona, sent a letter to the FCC dated July 19, 2021 responding to an earlier FCC letter asking for clarification regarding whether the station had ever been on the air.
Acting General Manager Martin Eder said in the response that they had offered to transfer the license to the Los Coyotes Tribal Chairman’s Association but “heard nothing in return.” Eder did not state whether ASD had actually ever installed or operated a transmitter in spite of having claimed to have been on the air since July 2019 and having held a current license.
Eder told the FCC that ASD “voluntarily relinquishes our FCC broadcast license for 89.9, Romona, CA hoping to serve the greater good.”
