New station from Auction 62

[ajhenderson]

MM-FM020-A
Salome AZ
Kemp Communications, Inc.
$372,000

Any ideas on what they'll do with the station (101.9)? For an opening bid of $1,500, the lowest possible, that seems like a lot to spend on a Class A in a town with 2,000 people and terrain issues that will prevent the 100-meter stick from getting out very far. Or is this going to end up in another big rulemaking proposal?

 

[Outlaw]

> MM-FM020-A
> Salome AZ
> Kemp Communications, Inc.
> $372,000
>
> Any ideas on what they'll do with the station (101.9)? For
> an opening bid of $1,500, the lowest possible, that seems
> like a lot to spend on a Class A in a town with 2,000 people
> and terrain issues that will prevent the 100-meter stick
> from getting out very far. Or is this going to end up in
> another big rulemaking proposal?
>
We were bidding on this station on the previous auction #37. Then the station went up to $600,000+ and the winning bidder withdrew their bid and the station moved over to auction #62.

Last time I checked, this signal at 101.9 has the window to move East down the I-10 and get a little signal into the South West Valley cities such as Buckeye and Avondale with an upgrade to a C1.

Most likely they are going to move it closer to Phoenix with a change in community of license. There is a chance they can remove this signal out of Salome as their sole transmission service as long as they don’t put it on the air yet and backfill a new allocation there.

There is also a new proposed rule making underway right now at the FCC that may eliminate the rule that doesn’t let stations move out of a single station town creating a “white area”.

Kemp Communications is also the same company who purchased KMZQ 99.3 Payson for over $4M in auction #37. Last app for them shows an effort to get a signal close enough to Mt. Ord to get a 200 watt booster up there. No change of Community of license there.

 

[ajhenderson]

> We were bidding on this station on the previous auction #37.
> Then the station went up to $600,000+ and the winning bidder
> withdrew their bid and the station moved over to auction
> #62.
>
> Last time I checked, this signal at 101.9 has the window to
> move East down the I-10 and get a little signal into the
> South West Valley cities such as Buckeye and Avondale with
> an upgrade to a C1.
>
> Most likely they are going to move it closer to Phoenix with
> a change in community of license. There is a chance they can
> remove this signal out of Salome as their sole transmission
> service as long as they don’t put it on the air yet and
> backfill a new allocation there.

So my dream of owning Salome's only radio station can live on...

I've been looking at HD Radios as of late and look forward to the day in a few years when, between traditional and HD signals, I can hear 150 FM stations. How thin can we slice the pie here?