KWXY Cathedral City/Palm Springs CA update

[rjoc]

I was interested in the status of the proposed sale of long-time Beautiful Music station KWXY 98.5 Cathedral City (Palm Springs) which I noted on this forum a couple months ago. I did a Google Search for KWXY, and found a link to an article dated Feb. 16, 2008 in the Desert Sun in Palm Springs, CA. There was an article on the upcoming sale. I tried to paste the link, but didn't have any luck. If interested in the article, just do a google search for KWXY, or go to the Desert Sun homepage www.mydesert.com for the article, and letters to the editor about the sale of KWXY.
It looks like its' days are numbered, unfortunately. I have always enjoyed listening to it while visiting the area over the past 20 years.

 

[Carmine5]

I was interested in the status of the proposed sale of long-time Beautiful Music station KWXY 98.5 Cathedral City (Palm Springs) which I noted on this forum a couple months ago. I did a Google Search for KWXY, and found a link to an article dated Feb. 16, 2008 in the Desert Sun in Palm Springs, CA. There was an article on the upcoming sale. I tried to paste the link, but didn't have any luck. If interested in the article, just do a google search for KWXY, or go to the Desert Sun homepage www.mydesert.com for the article, and letters to the editor about the sale of KWXY.
It looks like its' days are numbered, unfortunately. I have always enjoyed listening to it while visiting the area over the past 20 years.

This is an interesting and complex transaction. Looking at the purchase agreements, sale of KWXY all hinges on the sale and move of KDES-FM from Palm Springs to Redlands. If that happens then R&R Radio gets 10.5 million for KDES from Liberman Broadcasting and, in turn, R&R can buy KWXY from Glen Barnett for 7.5 million (nice deal for R&R who pockets 3 million and none the transactions include any real estate).

The sticking point is the move of KDES. It looks like the entire population of Palm Springs has filed an opposition to it. And if I'm reading these agreements correctly, if Liberman can't move KDES for whatever reason then they don't buy it and KWXY doesn't get purchased.

So we'll just have to wait and see what happens. You may yet still have Beautiful Music on KWXY.

C5

 

[passtheword]

The newspaper article says the beautiful music format will be moving to the AM dial. If it does, it probably won't be any time before the owners yank it off of there, too. Back in the 80's and 90's when the beautiful music FM's started abandoning the format, the owners would sometimes move the format to a co-owned AM. The format would hang around for about a year or so before being dropped there as well.

Wonder if it's possible one of the non-commercial FM's in the area could buy the intellectual property of the station. Commercial WKTZ-FM in Jacksonville is a good example of that scenario. When the station was sold back in the 80's, the owners sold the music, calls, etc to Jones College, which still run WKTZ today, non-commercially.



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[jonbruce]

The move of 104.7 KDES to Redlands will happen eventually. It might be a year down the road. Yes, a ton of people including the mayor himself filed informal objections but the FCC does not regulate formats. Gold Coast, owner of the 104.7 in Oxnard also filed technical objections that are without merit and they were responded to. The format will be moved to it's origional home 1340am. R/R radio wants to keep the KWXY calls in its cluster. All of the non-coms out here are religious or translators for Los Angeles based educational operations.