They were out of Cibolo. I wonder what happened to cause AM 830 to go dark?
It never made any money. It was a Spanish-language religious format known as "Radio Recuerdo." Unlike Univision's "Recuerdo," it meant "remembrance" in terms of Jesus. The owner also owned a Hispanic grocery store. Can't remember which one(s), though. An AutoZone exists where the station used to be, but if you go back to early Google street views, you can still see the satellite dish the station used. The address was 118 S. Las Moras.
There was another station out of Helotes on AM 1440 KXAM playing a Variety format. I guess that was the station sold off to KONO to move their license from Fredericksburg to Helotes.
KXAM simply went off-air and surrendered its license. It wasn't sold, and no one wanted it. At the time, Helotes wasn't what it is today, and KXAM didn't have the signal to compete with San Antonio stations while Helotes didn't have enough advertisers on its own to sustain a full-time radio operation. The community felt the loss. People wanted another station, but they realized a new local station would have to be noncommercial. That effort was ultimately abandoned. KBRN in Boerne was a similar situation about 35 years ago, which is why it was part of the Bernal Network for about 25 years. The Hill Country lost a handful of stations in the late 80's/early 90's. KHLC was another one, though it ultimately found an 11th hour buyer and returned as KEEP.
I am aware of the legality of multi station ownership. But I heard that there had to be an existing tower from then KONO 101 to move their existing license over from Fredericksburg to Helotes so in order to do so, they acquired a station that was dark, which unless there was another station in Helotes that went dark that was the one they were referring to.
There is no such rule requiring an existing tower for a station to move to another city. The FCC generally allows FM's to move to unserved cities, though stations have to prove that an unserved community is, in fact, a legitimate community. Station moves have other rules, too, but moving within a metro area is usually fairly easy if you can find a community in the area to actually move, aren't trying to move more than a click or two from your dial position, aren't leaving an existing community unserved, and won't be too close to other stations or allotments. KONO-FM covered West Texas extremely well from Fredricksburg, but the tower between Boerne and Comfort didn't put a perfect signal into all of San Antonio, let alone areas to the south and east of the city. Atascosa and Wilson Counties are relatively sparsely populated, but a few diaries there could make a noticeable difference in numbers. Moving the transmitter into town wouldn't cover Fredricksburg with the required signal. The original plan to get KONO-FM moved into the city was to relicense the station to Castroville. I believe that was part of a chain of station moves that ultimately fell apart. Proving Helotes was a legitimate community, however, was fairly easy since it once had a station. So, it ended up pursuing that instead of going back down the Castroville route. Once it got approval to move to Helotes, it started announcing "KONO-FM Helotes" almost immediately, though the actual move of the transmitter took another year or so.
