• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

KMAS-AM Sold to General Manager

Looks like iFiber has sold KMAS-AM to the General Manager of the Station and Morning host, Jeff Slakey.

Filed with FCC Today, $152,940.00
He was the former GM/morning host. Had left the station last May. They'll also be flipping back to a Full Service Classic Hits format (if they haven't already).

 
There goes the end of iFiberOne. iFiber Communications was bought out by Ziply Fiber earlier in the year and the Central Washington news outlet was renamed to Your Source One.
 
Sounds like what happened to KRKO a few years back. Hopefully, they can get more advertising (maybe as far as the Hood Canal region) with the music format. 103.3 gets out pretty well.
 
I've followed KMAS since its inception in the early sixties. Its first home was in a rented house in the highlands near where all the retail activity is now, north of town. As I recall, it was 1 kw 1280 and a daytimer. I was in high school in Raymond working parttime at KAPA, and our Chief Engineer Bob Sheetz had the opportunity to become 1/3 owner of the new Shelton station. I was told if I got my First Class Radiotelephone License, I could be KAPA's Chief Engineer... which I did (and got a raise to $300/month).

After high school, some college and a few other radio jobs, several years later I was hired as Chief Engineer of KOL in Seattle (and my first experience with FM).

At some point, Harold Greenburg, of KTAC fame, bought the station. My nephew, against my advice, went to work at KMAS for awhile.

Somewhere along the line, KMAS changed frequency to 1030 with full-time authority. It was discovered later that if they had simply put up a taller tower, they could've been fulltime on 1280 to begin with.

I have no idea how or why iFiberOne figured they could make money with a broadcasting service they knew nothing about.

What a ride for this station...

My sincere best wishes for the new ownership and a return to local and community-involved radio!
 
... a bit to add to Bill's history:

In and around Bill's time at KAPA, and eventually, the empire he built in Aberdeen, I was in and around KGY, KITN, KBKW, KDUX and KGHO, mainly in technical positions, but some announcing at a couple of them. Through those travels, I worked with all but one of KMAS's owners; a relationship that continues today.

Bruce Jorgenson owned KMAS (maybe built it?). The State decided they wanted to run a highway through his tower site and paid to relocate him to the Capitol Hill section of town, where it remains today. Bruce ran the station from a narrow, rented section of the (then) State liquor store, at the end of Cota St. He'd eventually build the station's final studio location about 2 1/2 blocks up the street. That studio was a state-of-the-art facility... as good as anything I saw in Seattle back then.

At that time, KMAS was a 1kW daytimer on 1280.

Bruce sold the station to Harold and Marian Greenberg in 1988. In the years between then and the sale to Dale and Jerry, KMAS would go to 5kW directional (2 towers), then back to a single tower on 1030 with 10kW day & 1kW night. Their Canadian RCA transmitter had no low-power cutback, so the original 1962 ITA 1kW rig was moved to 1030 and continued to serve as the station's night transmitter, until about 2007, when we put in a somewhat newer rig that could handle both levels with far fewer tubes. Today, everything up there is solid state and fully automated.

Harold got a CP for an FM, which he never built. Instead, he sold the CP, and the resulting station became KRXY. KMAS would remain a standalone until "AM-on-FM".

The 1280 license was reconstructed in Lacey, and is currently KLDY, one of the two stations the eclectic Skip Marrow built near N. Thurston HS... KBRD being the other one.

Jeff began his broadcast career in Shelton and was never completely disconnected from KMAS. He continued to act in a management role, handling traffic and general administrative duties for iFiber after he backed away from the daily "Daybreak" show. I also wish him success with this new venture.
 
Last edited:
I just checked out the website. It still has the Mariners' 2021 baseball schedule. Not this year. Not last year. 2021.

There's no Listen Live. (I guess that's too expensive.) There's no program guide. It does seem to be updating local and Washington state news.
 
Try kmas.com

The other sites may still be part of iFiber. I don't know what will happen to those, other than that the new owners do expect to continue streaming... somewhere.
 
Thanks for reminding me of one of the partners. It was Bruce Jorgenson, Bob Sheetz, and a third local partner. Bob Sheetz moved up from Raymond. Part of his "contribution" to the partnership were a few unneeded equipment items from KAPA.
 
"iFiberOne", sounds like the name of a breakfast cereal.

Was that their on air branding???
iFiberOne News Radio. Here in Central Washington, we had iFiberOne News (owned by the same company as KMAS) until it was bought out and changed to Your Source One (which is a dumb name imho)
 
Your Source One? But it can't be as dumb as NonStop Local! I.E., the new branding at KHQ and the central WA NBC stations. Callsigns are a thing of the past for these stations. They don't even identify with "NBC" anymore.
 
Your Source One? But it can't be as dumb as NonStop Local! I.E., the new branding at KHQ and the central WA NBC stations. Callsigns are a thing of the past for these stations. They don't even identify with "NBC" anymore.

I worked for a radio station who would use the tag line "THE Local station... Monster Radio AM 1150"

We did it because in a see of cluster owned stations with a more big city programming mindset, we did all kinds of insanely local stuff.
 
Your Source One? But it can't be as dumb as NonStop Local! I.E., the new branding at KHQ and the central WA NBC stations. Callsigns are a thing of the past for these stations. They don't even identify with "NBC" anymore.
Yuck! I guess that means that the Q-6 branding is gone?
 
Yuck! I guess that means that the Q-6 branding is gone?
Yessir. Cowles retired "Q6" last fall, it had been used since the 1960s. They also dropped the classic "Kulr (Color) 8" branding at KULR Billings...
My guess is most Spokanites are still referring to channel 6 as "Q6" in conversation. How can you not?
 
Yessir. Cowles retired "Q6" last fall, it had been used since the 1960s. They also dropped the classic "Kulr (Color) 8" branding at KULR Billings...
My guess is most Spokanites are still referring to channel 6 as "Q6" in conversation. How can you not?
I remember Q6 from my college days at WSU -- sad to see it go away, since it was a small something that gave some character to the market. But it seems to be a sign of the times, since Fox de-Q'd KCPQ-TV in Tacoma last year, and I'm guessing that the XL4 identification that KXLY-TV used when I was in college has been gone for a lot longer than that.
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom