The objections posted on the FCC website are related to the License to Cover application that is pending before the FCC for KRKO. A commission staffer simply misidentified a couple of the letters. For example, "THE COUNTY OF SNOHOMISH," is the beginning text of the second paragraph from a letter writer who lives near the site. Bryant - good for you for recognizing this. This group of 16 people is essentially the same core group of opponents who have fought the project since 2002. The arguments raised in the informal objections have already been heard and adjudicated - multiple times. They have a right to file informal objections. They've availed themselves of the opportunity. Their arguments will be heard again. We're prepared to address the merits when the time comes.
Boiseengineer isn't far from the truth, but in this case, some of the opponents really believe AM radio causes health problems. Science is not on their side. At least one opponent has political aspirations and is leveraging the exposure to further a future political career.
The post indicating the new 1380 signal has been lackluster must be basing that assumption on their own personal expectations of what the signal would be. The signal is exactly what we expected it to be, and slightly better at night than we thought it would be. It's vastly improved from the old transmitter site if you look at the field strength measurements. I should know. I made half of them. And, we still have a substantial amount of work left to do. Some of you may notice the signal sounds more quiet than others on the AM band. Our modulation is way down until we can get a better link to the transmitter site. Loudness will improve range and it's one of the things still on our "to-do" list. The station isn't owned by a corporation, though. Some of you already know the station is licensed to a local family - one of the only stations in Puget Sound that is still licensed to a family, and the only one with more than 5,000 watts to be licensed to a local family.
As for 1520 AM, we believe we'll be able to commence construction this summer. We won our appeal with the County. The opponents withdrew the majority of their superior court appeal last week after they realized they were going to lose on the merits. Their remaining appeal issue boils down to whether the FCC has sole jurisdiction to regulate all portions of the electromagnetic spectrum or whether every local city, county, parish, or state in America gets to reserve a portion of the regulation and make their own rules.
1520 AM will have a limited nighttime signal covering Snohomish, Lake Stevens, Mill Creek, Everett, and Mukilteo - about 160,000 people. The daytime signal will approximate the signal from 1380 and cover 1.5 - 2 million people. We have three or four potential scenarios for this radio station. We're evaluating all of them right now and will make a final decision at the time we receive Program Test Authorization from the FCC for this radio station. That may occur this fall. 1520 requires two additional antenna structures because the directional array is a four-element, in-line on a specific bearing whereas the 1380 directional array is a four-element parallelogram. The directional signals for 1380 and 1520 appear to point in the same direction, but they actually are centered on different bearings to the northwest, and the null portion of the signal is completely different for both stations. We looked at using the 1380 array for 1520. 1520 couldn't cover Snohomish two miles to the north in that configuration at night and there were engineering problems that couldn't be overcome. 1520 will be 50kW daytime and 50kW nighttime. Ironically, even though both stations are omni-directional daytime, they can't share the same daytime radiator because it creates problems that can't be fixed through engineering.
TVRadioGuru, to your point about the on-going "investment" to fight the NIMBY's, I tend to think of it as money out the window, for us and for the opponents. The opponents have expended or have exceeded $750,000 in fighting us since 2002 and they have very little to show for it. We made all the compromises they asked for in 2002 - self-supporting structures, height reductions, tree planting, lighting elimination, etc., but that wasn't really what they wanted - they wanted the project to go away. From our side, the permitting costs ran double the costs of construction. It's been a huge waste of time and money. There is no question that we could have made a better investment in something else if money was the only issue.
Many factors have contributed to our desire to pursue this project, but the most important one is that we believe in the merits of the project and the fact that regardless of the programming today, tomorrow, or yesterday, and regardless of how people perceive we've operated the radio station, the signal is an asset to the community by itself. It's more of an asset as a 50kW signal than it is as a 5kW signal, from building penetration, to reach, to emergency coverage. Opportunities to improve coverage in the over-crowded AM band are extremely rare. The old 5kW KRKO signal was designed to cover a population that existed in 1958 - before I-5 was completed, and the nighttime signal stopped dead two kilometers from the site in one direction. Rimshot directional 5kW signals are going dark around the country or converting to foreign music with no staff. They can't protect their programming from poaching (KRKO has been raided multiple times since 1993 and at least two times 90% of the programs were taken from KRKO in one shot), they can't keep a sales staff because good sales people move to stations with bigger signals so they can make more money, and they can't even get a shot at showing up in the ratings because their signals seldom make it beyond one county.
We have a strong local program that allows us to shift from sports to major topics of local importance when necessary, and we do that. The program has a large, responsive audience that shows up at station events. Do we want to do more? Sure, but the other part of the equation is that the station needs more revenue to do that, and one way to generate more revenue for better programming is to create a signal that allows you to call on five times more businesses than you could in the past.
