One more idea is for KNTB/KBRO moving to 1250 for ESPN Deportes, much better signal for ESPN Deportes. Then 1490 can become a station with full service Kitsap County programming and I don't care what happens to 1480.
-crainbebo
On the same topic...
Armchair quarterbacking what a station "should" do is easy... when you're not the one writing the checks and making (hopefully) the payroll.
I've been associated, off and on, and at one level or another, with both KBRO and KITZ since the late '80s, and have seen both stations transition through various formats and economies.
In its time, KBRO was Kitsap County's broadcast powerhouse... much like KGY was in Olympia. Seattle didn't pay much attention to anything beyond its shoreline, we didn't have satellite, internet or cell phones, we were lucky to have private lines at all and cable was basically a copy of what you could get over the air. The local AM station was a much larger factor in local lives, as was the local paper.
KBRO operated with a sister FM station, until they were split in the mid '80s. The FM is now KRWM. For them, the split really pushed the AM down the slope. The AM went through 2 bankruptcies, 3 owners, 3 locations and several formats, including a LGBT satellite feed out of California. It's settled with its current owner since 2005.
KITZ was the former KTNT / KPMA (Tacoma). In '85/'86, a number of Kitsap businessmen took the station and its owner out of bankruptcy and moved it to Silverdale. At the time, KBRO was still making pretty good money, and the thought was that KITZ could take a piece of that, maybe add listeners of its own and both could do well enough. It was live and local. We had a new building, good equipment good announcers and an experienced management and sales staff at the station. Larry Nelson's son, Jeff, worked there for several years. Other members of the station's staff went to KOMO and KZOK. Everyone, management, sales, programming and engineering, had larger-market experience. For 5 or 6 years, the station almost did... ok, but there were very few months that it covered its monthly expenses. The Board was consistently putting money into the place to cover the monthly nut. It changed owners 3 more times and locations twice. It's been with its current owner since 2000; sleepy... maybe... but alive.
Everyone knows how AM has declined, and the Kitsap stations are good examples. As information began to flood our eyes and ears from all sides, the local radio station became less relevant. Both Kitsap stations have good enough coverage of the county during the day, but neither does well at night. The local emergency officials recognized that and passed by their own stations, in favor of coordinating their emergency notifications with more-powerful Seattle stations.
Both stations have rented towers, rented studios, and all of the infrastructure of any small station (though ESPN Deportes is somewhat larger). Faced with much larger stations in Seattle, all of which have better sales and larger budgets for programming, it's difficult to compete in that shadow without finding a small niche that the big guys don't want. For KITZ, that became a mouthpiece for a second-amendment rights organization. For KBRO and its associated stations, it's Hispanic sports.
All of this opinionating about what a station should do with its signal is fine (forget about turning in the license), but there are few suggestions here that I believe I could run and pay the stations' overhead.
The last iteration of an AM oldies station was tried by KVI, bringing the music "back to AM, where it belongs". That was a disaster. Progressive talk has been tried, and has failed. The format was given a 50,000 watt signal, yet blog wags were never happy. They wanted this syndicated voice or that... more of this than that... more local, less local, yadda yadda. Bottom line, the format was just depressing. Nobody was happy about anything on that station. How long could you listen to that, political persuasion notwithstanding? Air America was just as bad. It's no surprise that the whole thing went down in flames. None of it was fun to listen to for very long.
Forget about music on AM. KIXI has their niche. Anyone getting rich over there? I'll be impressed if KGA pays the bills on their station, though I hope they do. With the vast majority of listeners NOT on HD, I don't think I'd butcher my analog signal any more than NRSC already requires, just to put that kind of stereo out. That's a lotta watts, trying to compete with local FM country.
Sports, talk and religion are about all that's left for AM, mainly because, for some reason, it seems to fit. Did KIRO ever fully recover from shoving their talk off to FM?
The new owners of KGY-AM could very well save that station. It hasn't been doing well in recent years.
As for Kitsap, I'm sure they'd like to upgrade their current signal, but I don't see anyone dedicating either 1,000 watt station to full-time local programming and trying to make a living as a standalone. With less than 17% of the listening audience turning to AM for anything, I doubt there are enough listeners available to attract sufficient revenue. Like it or not, good will and social responsibility alone won't pay the power bills.
