Clear Channel Radio Engineer Dean Imhof will join the expanded six-station Broadcasting Company of the Americas group as Director of Engineering beginning Monday, January 18. He and veteran engineer Bill Lipis will have to move the Finest City Broadcasting studios on Granite Ridge Drive to the Sorrento Mesa BCA studios by the end of the month.

Dean and the Clear Channel engineers had been hired to maintain the FCB technical facilities after they broke away from the larger Clear Channel group in December 2005.

Dean began his career at KOZN radio in Imperial at the age of 15. He has extensive experience with the automation systems at Clear Channel and Finest City Broadcasting after starting with Jacor in 1997.

Clear Channel Director of Engineering John Rigg said he will definitely miss Dean’s talents at the group facility.

Local Media of America, backed by Thoma Bravo, on January 7 took over operations of Finest City Broadcasting. FCB  had operated Mexican-licensed radio stations “Z-90” XHTZ 90.3 FM, “91X” XETRA 91.1 FM, and “Magic” XHRM 92.5 FM. Broadcasting Company of America, led by CEO John Lynch, convinced LMA to back taking over the FCB financial obligations and grow the stations. They will join “XX Sports Radio” XEPRS 1090 AM, “the Walrus” XHPRS 105.7 FM, and San Diego 1700 XEPE AM.

Lynch had been head of Noble Broadcasting when it operated XETRA AM and FM before its sale to Jacor in 1997.

Past KNSD technical manager Randy Mickler died December 20 at the age of 56 after a long battle with cancer. According to his successor Dave MacKinnon, he had retired earlier in 2009. A San Diego Union-Tribune obituary said that Mickler had worked at channel 39 for 29 years and had received several Emmys for his creative work there. His wife Jane Clifford had achieved some notoriety herself as a columnist for the Union-Tribune.

Three engineers from KGTV and one from Cox Media (cable channel 4) passed their SBE certification exams in November 2009. Congratulations to these newly certified engineers:

• Chief Engineer Andrew Lombard, KGTV, Certified Broadcast Television Engineer
• Andrew Cole, KGTV, Certified Broadcast Network Technologist
• Matt Schiller, KGTV, Certified Broadcast Technologist
• Shane Fortin, Cox Media, Certified Broadcast Technologist

Many thanks to Oscar Medina for proctoring these exams for the past 10 years. I will be taking on that job moving forward. Oscar and I had help with the November exams from Mike Curran. Chapter 36 now has 70 members, with 28 of those holding current certifications.

San Diego low power TV stations are finally getting their digital tickets from the FCC.

• KSDX-LD was granted a license for 275 watts omnidirectional on channel 9 from Mt. San Miguel. The KRCA Spanish language repeater recently shutdown channel 29 analog, which confounded everyone with its co-channel broadcast only a few miles from Tijuana digital XHTIT.

• K61GH was granted a Special Temporary Authority to operate on channel 50 on November 5, 2009. The Mt. San Miguel station will operate a 15 kW ATSC station with a northerly beam about 90° wide.
• KDTF-LD was granted a Construction Permit for operation on channel 51 digital from Mt. San Miguel with 12.4 kW with a broad beam to the southwest meant to serve metro San Diego as well. This Entravision property has been tricasting not only their primary Telefutura network, but also subchannels containing their Univision and MyNetworkTV feeds.
• KBOP-CA applied for a displacement to move to channel 42 from channel 43 on Mt. San Miguel with 10 kW ERP with a medium width beam to serve metro San Diego to the west, with little energy in other directions.

The San Diego non-commercial pure jazz outlet at 88.3 became the latest FM station in the market to put the Ibiquity digital sidebands on the air. Chief Engineer Larry Quick says they made the commitment after getting a matching grant from CPB, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. When asked what the greatest challenge was, he said that trying to keep the analog and digital signals in phase for a graceful fade from the IBOC signal has been a huge task.

The station raised its power to a stiff 22kW ERP V-pol only in 2007 at its transmitter in Linda Vista.