There is KXO 1230, which is an oldies/full service station...CBS and local news at TOH. You could see them add Yuma news and weather (which is the same as El Centro) to their newscasts
-
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
Rest of Arizona KBLU AM 560 Silenced: Yuma’s 80+ Year Radio Legacy Ends
- Thread starter bob_international
- Start date
There is KXO 1230, which is an oldies/full service station...CBS and local news at TOH. You could see them add Yuma news and weather (which is the same as El Centro) to their newscasts
Fairbanks is the second-largest city in Alaska and the nearest major supply point for the oil fields in that state. At least for now, oil = prosperity. Yuma doesn't have that.
As for Arizona population rankings, Yuma is eleventh in the 2020 Census, outranked by Phoenix and numerous Phoenix suburbs plus Tucson.
You really need to stop comparing apples to oranges.
Last edited:
A buddy of mine is Ops Manager for KXO-AM and FM. I visited a couple of times. The AM has a huge old school studio that is still mostly live and local while the FM, which is AC or Hot AC and #1 in the market runs off a PC on top of a filing cabinet and is voicetracked. I THINK there is one more English station in El Centro, with the rest being Spanish, plus the large handful of stations in Mexicali that serve the area well, and a bilingual CHR from La Rumorosa with studios in Mexicali (very good CHR rotation, but no live talent) that has a good signal serving both the El Centro area and Yuma. I would assume the Mexicali stations get in to Yuma okay, not sure about the El Centro stations, and San Luis is a good sized city with several Spanish stations. I forgot that KPBS/San Diego runs a full power FM in Calexico with KQVO/97.7 - I don't know how strong they are in Yuma, but there is another NPR station in the area that simulcasts San Diego full time. So you have (or will have) about five English live and local stations serving this entire area about 60 miles wide with the two areas, plux XHMIX (the CHR station in Rumorosa that is technically bilingual, but no live talent). It's a sadly depressed region and even though these stations command big numbers, they probably bill very poorly. There was once a great, well-run CHR in Brawley (near El Centro), Q-96, that was live, local, and sounded great. They could be heard well in Yuma too. I also think Z-93 in Yuma was CHR or Hot AC with a live and local staff in the early 90s and they didn't sound too bad as I recall (I live in San Diego and would drive out there on occasion or on my way to Phoenix). Q-96 moved West to San Diego with a much crappier signal and became an automated shell of its former self until Air 1/EMF bought them. To hear how good an unrated market like El Centro could do radio at one time in history, check out this clip from 26 years ago. They dropped put of the market in 2010 I think, and dropped the format two or three years later for Air 1.
San Luis Río Colorado is across the border sort of like Juárez and El Paso are sister border cities. SLRC has stations.
The market is close to two-thirds Hispanic. Around 70% of Hispanics are born in the US, so they are later generation and likely don't use Spanish language radio.
That station, at 1 kw in poor desert conductivity, does not come close to covering El Centro.
That KXO has a pretty good signal for a graveyard frequency during the day. As far as in-vehicle listening, it doesn't fade out completely until you're past the Foothills on I-8.
Remember, "speaking Spanish" does not mean the person is Spanish dominant. The vast majority of Hispanics in Yuma were born here, and are second generation. That is a group that may speak Spanish with their family and, maybe, some childhood friends... but they don't use Spanish much for anything else and don't use Spanish language media much, if at all.
This is like the ones that go to Quartzsite, AZ. Lots of mobile homes.
It's actually in an agricultural valley. The transmitter is located at the I-8 and 4th Ave exit in El Centro, south of downtown.
Locally, due to the river and irrigation, it is agricultural. But, like the area from Calexico up to Palm Springs, the underlying conductivity is very low. The FCC map shows the area at 8, but the reality based on actual coverage of stations is vastly less.
For example, the 1400 AM in Indio, CA, could not even put a good signal into Rancho Mirage and Cathedral City in the same Nielsen market.
But Yuma is about 60 miles from Calexico. No (former) Class IV station is going to cover that far unless it is in Kansas!
But remember where the transmitter is...the agriculturally rich soil of the Imperial Valley. No different than Central Valley AM reception. Also,keep in mind, this is in-vehicle reception. Inside a Yuma stucco home, that would be a different story.
Okay. I've traveled through Yuma several times between 1975 and 2003, and I had radios on all of those trips. Here are my comments on what can and can't be heard there along with (at the bottom) a note about Eldorado Broadcasting.
In Yuma itself, the locals (no surprise) come in best, although the location of the transmitter of KAWC-FM, the FM NPR outlet whose transmitter is some 20 miles east/northeast near Wellton,, may create some problems for less sensitive radios due to bleedover from some of the stations whose transmitters are closer to the city. Surprisingly, though it's pretty close, the San Luis Rio (I still don't know how to create the proper Spanish accents using the QWERTY keyboard) are not very strong in Yuma though they are stronger than the El Centro and Mexicali stations over there with a couple of FM exceptions. Yuma also has an English/Spanish Catholic LPFM station at 92.5 mHz, and, just across the border in Winterhaven, CA, there is a native American outlet that might make the town's western end (I haven't been to Yuma since that station came on the air so I can't verify my guess).
Of the Mexicali and Imperial Valley stations, Mexicali's station at 90.7 mHz could be heard nicely in Yuma the last time I visited and I've read here (but not verified) that the 98.3 Mexicali outlet also now puts a good signal into the city. On the AM side, most of the El Centro and Mexicali stations have good distant signals during the day with the Mexicali stations at 820 (soon moving to FM), 990, and 1050 kHz providing the strongest reception. At night, due to both skywave and transmitter limitations, none of the Imperial Valley stations make it to Yuma at all and neither do any of the San Luis Rio stations.
While I haven't seen any articles on this, I also suspect that Eldorado Broadcasting is in Financial trouble. Back around 2010 or so, that company owned radio stations in the San Luis Obispo and Victorville, CA markets as well as those in Yuma. The company dumped its San Luis Obispo outlets a few years back and it has now dumped all of its Yuma properties making the only radio stations the company owns being in the Victorville area. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that Eldorado is trying to sell those Victorville stations if that is what is happening behind the scenes.
In Yuma itself, the locals (no surprise) come in best, although the location of the transmitter of KAWC-FM, the FM NPR outlet whose transmitter is some 20 miles east/northeast near Wellton,, may create some problems for less sensitive radios due to bleedover from some of the stations whose transmitters are closer to the city. Surprisingly, though it's pretty close, the San Luis Rio (I still don't know how to create the proper Spanish accents using the QWERTY keyboard) are not very strong in Yuma though they are stronger than the El Centro and Mexicali stations over there with a couple of FM exceptions. Yuma also has an English/Spanish Catholic LPFM station at 92.5 mHz, and, just across the border in Winterhaven, CA, there is a native American outlet that might make the town's western end (I haven't been to Yuma since that station came on the air so I can't verify my guess).
Of the Mexicali and Imperial Valley stations, Mexicali's station at 90.7 mHz could be heard nicely in Yuma the last time I visited and I've read here (but not verified) that the 98.3 Mexicali outlet also now puts a good signal into the city. On the AM side, most of the El Centro and Mexicali stations have good distant signals during the day with the Mexicali stations at 820 (soon moving to FM), 990, and 1050 kHz providing the strongest reception. At night, due to both skywave and transmitter limitations, none of the Imperial Valley stations make it to Yuma at all and neither do any of the San Luis Rio stations.
While I haven't seen any articles on this, I also suspect that Eldorado Broadcasting is in Financial trouble. Back around 2010 or so, that company owned radio stations in the San Luis Obispo and Victorville, CA markets as well as those in Yuma. The company dumped its San Luis Obispo outlets a few years back and it has now dumped all of its Yuma properties making the only radio stations the company owns being in the Victorville area. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that Eldorado is trying to sell those Victorville stations if that is what is happening behind the scenes.
Here is the very brief explanation for the request of a silent STA that was filed today.
enterpriseefiling.fcc.gov
Draft Copy « Licensing and Management System « FCC
Licensing and Management System
I'm pretty sure I've seen KXO AM/FM listed for sale
They have been for sale for a very long time.
Radio Stations for Sale :: CMS Station Brokerage, Media Brokers for Small and Medium Market Broadcasters
CMS Station Brokerage specializes in providing media broker services for broadcasters in small and medium sized markets. We help radio station owners sell their radio stations to qualified buyers. We help buyers find radio stations which make sense to meet their objectives. We also do radio...
According to the listing, they are profitable.
Last edited:
Technically speaking, Campesina is a commercial radio station, too. I seem to remember the Cesar Chavez Foundation got into trouble for airing commercial ads on its noncommercial stations. I believe it agreed to sell all of its stations in the reserved part of the FM band and operate the rest of its stations as commercial. I don't know, however, if it actively attempts to sell in the Yuma market.
I've always been told that, with the exception of the "ñ" (which isn't really an accent), you will look more fluent by not typing the accents when typing in Spanish.
About 30 years ago, I had a friend in college who was from Victorville, and she said it didn't have much. I can't imagine it offers more today than it did back then. She called the local college, where she had gone to school before transferring to my school, "Tumbleweed Tech." Of the three markets where El Dorado used to operate, Victorville would seem to be the hardest place to make money.
In a Sunday morning in 1969, I rode with my folks and my mom's brother to Apple Valley just outside of Victorville. (I believe her brother was considering purchasing land there which ultimately didn't happen). At that time, there were only three radio stations serving the area: two AM outlets (960 and 1590) and an FM outlet (100.7 if I remember correctly) which was simulcasting the AM when I visited. The next time I was in the area with a radio was in 1996 as we were driving from Barstow to Palmdale and the radio landscape had grown much since my 1969 visit. There were four AM outlets serving the area (910, 960, 1550, and 1590) and several new FM channels had been added as well. If I remember correctly, that area's population had grown immensely between my first visit in 1969 and the visit in 1996. A lot of newcomers liked both the weather and the (then) cheaper housing prices. And the Roy Rogers Museum was drawing tourists from all over the place!
Since I haven't been in the area since 1996, I can't tell you about its population growth today but that population would have to really depart in great numbers before the area became like it was during my first visit.
Oh! And there is an aircheck of KHJ from July 3, 1967, where the Real Don Steele was promoting apple farms in Apple Valley. Of course that was cute at the time but given the area's location in California's high desert, I doubt that apples (which require a lot of water, if memory serves) could grow well there in the current climate.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
Huh. David (Eduardo) Gleason and I e-mail back and forth all the time in Spanglish (I am partially fluent in Spanish) and he never complains when I do that.
But, since Ted sort of asked:
á - Alt-0225
é - Alt-0233
í - Alt-0237
ó - Alt-0243
ú - Alt-0250
ñ - Alt-0241
¿ - Alt-0191
¡ - Alt-0161
And the city is "San Luis Río Colorado". That means "The town of San Luis on the Colorado River". Without the "Colorado" it could be "San Luis Río Mississippi" for all I know!