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Iowa Connoisseur-owned Newton/Grinnell stations are gone?

radiorobert said:
I had thought of Northwestern buying KCOB. However, given how much they've put into the investment to upgrade 107.1 just a few years ago, I assumed it may not be worth the additional cost now to make a purchase to just buy a handful (5-7) of miles on the 96.1 signal. Plus, they would now own two new stations. That's something they would obviously have to weigh.
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Judging by Connoisseur's recent divestitures, I get the impression that, if they can't find a viable local buyer for stations they want to sell, then they'll just shut them down. I haven't kept track of all their sales, so I could be wrong, but it doesn't seem that they will sell to buyers who would just turn stations into repeaters, which is what most of the religious broadcasters would do. Other than the 94.1 translator in Des Moines, IPR hasn't bought anything lately, either. The word "viable" is doing some work here: for example, it appeared that there was a willing buyer in Fairfield but Connoisseur decided to just shut down those stations. An outright shutdown would avoid having to take stations back if the buyer ran into financial trouble. It's also possible that these were shopped around and the offers they got were lowball at best. It's unlikely we'll ever know.
 
icybluelake said:
KRTI has a pretty decent signal. Could it be a candidate for a move-in, either west toward Des Moines or east toward Cedar Rapids and Iowa City?
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I won't say it would be impossible, but it certainly wouldn't be easy. Des Moines has a station on 106.3, and Cedar Rapids has one at 107.1. It would have to maintain second-adjacent spacing to a C3 in the Des Moines area and an A in Cedar Rapids. The other possibility would be for either it or one of the other stations to move. Not sure if that would be possible or not, but, again, it wouldn't be easy.
 
Kent said:
I won't say it would be impossible, but it certainly wouldn't be easy. Des Moines has a station on 106.3, and Cedar Rapids has one at 107.1. It would have to maintain second-adjacent spacing to a C3 in the Des Moines area and an A in Cedar Rapids. The other possibility would be for either it or one of the other stations to move. Not sure if that would be possible or not, but, again, it wouldn't be easy.
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The bigger issue is actually KIKD in Carroll. 106.7. It's a C3 as well. The 'fringe' (furthest) coverage contour gets as far east as almost the northwestern tip of Polk County. So I'd say its a no-go for a move in. Then after that, 106.3 becomes an issue having a tower on the north side of Des Moines. Pretty much impossible to do a Des Moines move in on 106.7.

Now if an existing Des Moines group was seeing something they could do on a new translator, 106.7 would be a perfect candidate. 250 watts at a semi decent height could serve the immediate metro just fine. But thats after KRTI would somehow get deleted.
 


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