• 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

KJLV Los Gatos EMF Proposed Move Cancelled (?)

R

RF101

Last edited:
Deal imminent for a better signal elsewhere on the Bay Area FM band? Their Milwaukee acquisitions this week came out of the blue. K-Love Inc. may be making some purchases to get ahead of the upcoming consolidation frenzy.
 
I was actually surprised that the FCC agreed to allow the transmitter to be moved in the first place. Keep in mind that KUIC-FM in Vacaville on the same frequency is (if memory serves) about 80 miles north and a little east of San Jose.
 
Just a guess...might have something to do with a first adjacent, WCBP/95.5 in Westley, about 45 miles ENE from the San Jose foothills in the Central Valley near Modesto. While in actuality neither station is likely to interfere with the other due to terrain shadowing, on paper the two stations might be too close together.
 
As someone who files FCC applications for a living, may I clarify?

No competent engineering consultant EVER files an application that doesn't already meet all the FCC's spacing standards. There's no guessing about what those are. They're all laid out in the rules, specifically sections 73.207, 73.215 and 73.213.

If the FCC staff thinks an application doesn't comply with the rules for whatever reason, they'll reach out by email to the consulting engineer to clear up whatever the issue is during processing.

Once the FCC has issued a construction permit, as they did for KJLV, they've certified that the proposed facility complies with the rules.

So if KJLV had any spacing issues to KUIC or any other station, the CP would not have been granted. And because K-Love has some of the best consulting engineers in the business, there's no way they ever would have filed an application that had any spacing issues.

If K-Love isn't following through on building out the CP, it's much more likely that it's some sort of a business issue. Sometimes you file a CP to move just as a negotiating ploy when you have a tower lease that's up for renewal. If you then get a better renewal deal, it's cheaper to stay put than move.

Or it's possible they had some other strategy to move signals around and then decided not to follow through on it for whatever reason.

But again - if there were a spacing issue, it would have been caught during the preparation of the application, and if not then during the application process, and certainly not after the CP was already granted.

I'm not sure how easy it is for Ted on his screen reader, but for any application like this, you can read the entire filing and see how the consulting engineer showed that there will be no interference, at least on paper.
 
The proposed contours weren’t much different, with maybe a little more signal going into the bay and up by Fremont. Other than getting more ERP into the Santa Clara Valley, I don’t see what the move would’ve accomplished. It looks like what remains of KRTY still owns the present site (KUFX is there, too). I thought that site was on Mount Umunhum south of San Jose and east of the Lexington Reservoir but it appears to be a little north of Umunhum. The now-formerly proposed site would have been in the East San Jose foothills. Coincidentally, there’s a lot of nouveau-riche housing construction over that way. Contours on maps don’t always tell the whole story, especially in an area with such widely variable terrain. Perhaps someone at K-Love determined that there could be more multipath issues. Or perhaps it’s simply a matter of coming to an agreement with the present tower owner and just deciding to stay there.

Unless Alpha gets really desperate and wants to sell for any price, I doubt if any full-power station in the Bay Area is on the market right now, at least not for whatever price K-Love would want to pay. K-Love has cobbled together enough coverage with translators that it doesn’t have to try any tricky maneuvers in the Bay Area.
 


Back
Top Bottom