But the fact remains that you still can't get a loan from most/any bank to start a radio broadcasting company or purchase a station. Who has an extra $30K to gamble with if they've never owned and run a station before?
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Nebraska KXSP (the former WOW) goes silent
- Thread starter Mark Roberts
- Start date
That's where it's going to come down to niche investors or people with extra cash that can take a business model and apply it properly.
itd cost you as much if not more for a new tower site not including a land lease or purchase
A property that was once one of the crown jewels of Omaha (along with 1110 KFAB) sold for about the price of a Lexus.
If given the choice, I'd rather have the Lexus. I suspect most people, even on this board, would.
I'm glad a local operator felt differently and wants to do something with it, but the mighty have certainly fallen.
Not to mention that I'd have a station with a half-dozen deejays, a half-dozen newsies, no chief engineer, and no one who knows how to sell ad time.
The existing 590 tower is a big one - 140 meters. Those other stations at the high end of the dial have much shorter towers. The 660 tower makes much more sense for sharing, but that's tricky with those two frequencies so close together. Usually the people designing filters like to see about 15% separation of frequencies. This is about 11%. I think it's probably doable, but probably not cheap. The two transmitter sites are not that far apart either. About 1/2 mile.
I remember hearing both 590 and 660 when I was growing up in South Dakota. 660 was daytime-only then though.
Dave B.
Attachments
It’s neat that they want to bring back the WOW call letters but their reasoning is a bunch of bull. Not one person listens to radio station because of call letters. At the the time the WOW calls were dropped it was the right move, the station was below a 2 when great empire sold it in 1999 and was 5-6+ range when it was KOMJ for those first few years.
Radio stations are not museums.
It’s neat that they want to bring back the WOW call letters but their reasoning is a bunch of bull. Not one person listens to radio station because of call letters. At the the time the WOW calls were dropped it was the right move, the station was below a 2 when great empire sold it in 1999 and was 5-6+ range when it was KOMJ for those first few years.
The arguments put forward in the article are clueless nonsense. Bringing back a three letter call is going to revitalize AM radio?😖🥱😴
I see nothing wrong with making a request for the WOW call letters. It will likely get people talking about the station and perhaps some free advertising if and when local newspapers and the TV news does a story about the "return of WOW". Old people will remember the old calls, and that's the age group they are targeting with their format. Whether writing a sob story about how much of a mistake it was for a previous PD to dump the old calls will work anymore than just saying you'd like them back for historical reasons...who knows. Like writing a "hardship letter" trying to get out of having to do jury duty. Pack it full of reasons.
I'd like to see them get the old calls back. It's not like a completely different station who has no history of using 3 letter calls is asking the FCC for a set of 3 letter calls.
I'd like to see them get the old calls back. It's not like a completely different station who has no history of using 3 letter calls is asking the FCC for a set of 3 letter calls.
We've heard David talk about how the owner of 930 AM in Los Angeles was able to get three-call-letter KHJ back. The station was KHJ from 1922 to 1986. After being KRTH (AM) for four years, the call sign became KKHJ in 1990, switching to a Spanish-language format. The owners asked the FCC to drop the first K. Why? Because in Spanish, two Ks sounds like a slang for excrement. As David points out, legal IDs are given in English, not Spanish. There's no reason to ever say the call letters in Spanish.
But no matter. The FCC allowed 930 to return to KHJ. The only legitimate reason the FCC permits a previous three letter call sign to come back is if the station is owned by the same company. The current owners have nothing to do with the owners who gave up the KHJ call sign in 1986. But their reasoning prompted the FCC to grant their request.
BTW, WOW-TV 6 was spun off in 1975. In those days, two owners could not share the same call sign. The AM station kept the WOW call letters but the FCC allowed the TV station to get a new call sign beginning with a W. It is now WOWT. Apparently the new owner of Channel 6 appealed to the FCC that giving it a K call sign would hurt sales efforts. Advertisers might think it's a different station from the one they've been using for their commercials. Even though Nebraska has been in K territory since the 1920s, the FCC allowed the TV station to have a W call sign similar to the call letters it gave up.
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This has happened in the UK as well, albeit for different technical reasons. 2-3 companies have spent the past few years buying up pretty much every local FM signal to put the same national programming out. Those stations are gone - studios closed, everyone fired, satellite feeding the transmitter forever.
In that time, DAB has become mainstream, and now with a lower barrier to entry (no need to buy a station, no transmitters or sites needed, you just set up a stream and pay "rent" for carriage on the local DAB signal) there has been a boom in small, independent radio stations. Some have come along and failed, some have thrived. Finally, a free market in radio!
Those people are likely going to be very old if it’s not country, is there any type of appetite for some kind of “WOW country”? Good Empire had poor ratings for both WOW AM and FM especially when KXKT flipped in 1992. 94.1 had some of its highest ratings when it dropped the WOW calls when it’s was still country, that was before KQCH. WOW was top 40 for about a ten year period before that in the 1970’s.
Local TV and newspapers covering a resurrected AM is not a thing that is likely to happen in 2026. It isn't on the mind of the 27 year old reporters at KMTV, who would have no idea what a WOW was, or probably what an AM radio is.
Even if it did happen, a spot on the 6pm news isn't nearly what it was 30 years ago.
Whether it's wishful thinking or not, I side with @nitroengine on this one. In fact, I'm sure the owners would have loved to get KOIL, the callsign of Omaha's most popular top-40, but that callsign is nicely tucked away on its old 1290kHz frequency as a conservative talker.
Maybe it won't last long, but it will be a fun listen for us old geezers, too. What I'm interested in seeing is whose tower the station is going to use and at what power. Yet, even there, if it goes to the short stick used by the 1490 kHz station, it will still get out further than the 1490 station because it's lower on the dial.
So a 27 year old reporter shouldn't do any news stories that are not on their mind. What kind of thinking is that? That person should be fired and kept out of any newsroom! That means not bothering to research and learn the history, ignoring what it meant to older folks in the community, and local Omaha radio broadcasting, because you're too young to remember. And BTW, the brief return of XEPRS as Oldies was covered by local San Diego TV news.
News is about broadcasting, not narrowcasting. No reporter under age 50 is going to pitch a story about a radio station trying to get back three letter calls, no matter how popular that station was 50 years ago. You think someone should be fired because they have news judgement and understand it doesn't matter or impact the lives of their viewers whether or not a station gets three letter calls? Why don't you try to get an assignment editor job in Omaha, and then you can assign the story.
Most people couldn't care less about whether an AM radio station is going to get three letter calls that haven't been used in almost 30 years. I barely remember when that station was WOW and I'm in my early 40's, which is part of the demo TV news wants to attract, even if it doesn't always succeed. San Diego is a world away from Omaha.
Go ask 50 people of different ages what the call letters of their favorite local radio station are and what that station's call letters were 50 years ago. I bet less than half of them would be able to tell you.
Not shouldn't. Won't.
You've found precisely the problem. TV reporters -- especially in smaller markets -- have to report a story, sometimes two or three, every day they work. Because time is limited, they usually tell easy stories, not those which require research.
In this case, there are two challenges:
1. Figuring out what was significant about WOW
2. Finding someone to talk with on camera, ideally someone who remembered the original iteration of WOW
I cannot find any evidence of this. The lone mainstream source I could find was a column by Richard Wagoner: Southern California radio fans now get nearly all-day oldies with classic LA DJs
I think it depends on the market. Certain places have a strong sense of history, others not so much. I don’t know enough about Omaha to give a valid opinion.
But if WOW had been in Memphis, New Orleans, St. Louis etc. and was coming back, it would get major news coverage. Dallas, Atlanta, Houston etc. probably not.
But if WOW had been in Memphis, New Orleans, St. Louis etc. and was coming back, it would get major news coverage. Dallas, Atlanta, Houston etc. probably not.
Right now, Walnut could just as easily use “W-O-W” as a slogan and announce the KXSP call letters only once per hour as legally mandated. They could, once they get a transmitting site and antenna for the station. To state the obvious point, there are higher priorities here than a set of call letters.
It was a news item that discussed between two anchors with video of the billboard advertising the station in the background. I don't appreciate that you are insinuating that I'm lying.
Not every news story is a full blown report. There is no reason why it can't be a filler item during a newscast.