On March 4, 2022, the FCC granted Activist San Diego a Construction Permit for a new non-commercial educational FM station on 89.1 MHz on Gaskill Peak southeast of Alpine with Dulzura listed as the Community of License. The CP is for 300 watts horizontal and vertical at 2775 feet AMSL at a location mapped as “Alpine Dog Ranch.”
The group already operates KNSJ from Monument Peak on this frequency.
Investment private equity firms Standard General and Apollo Global Management announced last week they are jointly purchasing broadcasting holding company TEGNA for $5.4-billion. The purchase will include San Diego CBS affiliate KFMB (TV), which had been picked up by TEGNA in late 2017.
Standard General previously led Young Broadcasting out of bankruptcy, with the company acquiring a controlling stake in Media General, which sold to Nexstar in 2018. Apollo, meanwhile, owns the TV stations that had been operated by Cox Media Group, having acquired them in 2019.
The FCC in mid-February 2022 approved Audacity sports talk station KWFN 97.3 FM’s Minor Modification application to relocate from the KOGO tower to the KGB-FM tower one mile to the northwest. KWFN plans to share an 8-bay ERI “rototiller” antenna with KGB-FM 101.5 and radiate 38 kW horizontal and vertical polarity atop the KLSD (AM) tower.
On February 24, 2022, the FCC granted the KOGO (AM) application to move to the KGB-AM 760 kHz site at the west end of Santee. KOGO will be allowed to output 9 kW directional daytime and 10 kW directional nighttime. To keep the same radiation, the old power of 5 kW needed to be raised due to the much shorter antennas.
After the move, the KOGO towers on Vertical Bridge property will reportedly come down and the property developed for homes.
On February 11, 2022, the FCC dismissed the recent Non-commercial Educational (NCE) application for a station serving San Diego from the KGB-FM site. The group had chosen 90.3 MHz, apparently without research into its occupation by co-channel Tijuana station XHITZ and alternate channel XHTIM 90.7.
Several more of these Mexico-blind NCE applications are pending and will have to be dismissed.
The FCC in early February 2022 denied an Informal Objection by Mike Halloran to KSDS 88.3 San Diego’s license renewal, granting that renewal the same day. A rebuttal to the objection had been filed by KSDS in December 2021.