First a little background. Between 1972 and 1977, I went with the rest of my family and camped at the Glamis Sanddunes over Thanksgiving weekend. I always took along a trusty portable radio (a Radio Shack 5-bander on most of the trips) to make notes on stations I heard. Being anywhere between 9 and 14 years old during these trips and also being totally blind, I was unable to read frequencies. That lack of physical vision also makes it difficult, if not impossible, for me to read David Gleason's broadcasting yearbooks--they are not in an accessible .pdf file.
I've said all of this to lead to the following question. During our 1974 trip, I heard something on FM based out of El Centro, California, that I've never heard again. It was all English with one of the Drake-Shenalt Hit Parade formats, and at the time, it was one of the few stations there I could listen to fulltime. The frequency, by memory, was either 102.3 or 102.5, and my memory says that the callsign I heard was KNEU-FM. The only local FM station heard in the Imperial Valley at the time was the 103.3 station (now XHVG) which played English AC with Spanish announcers.
I never heard the station again. When we visited Glamis during Thanksgiving of 1975, Mexicali had added an all-Spanish station at 101.9 and KXO-FM had begun at 107.5 mHz with an easy listening format. And while I've ridden through the area several times after the Glamis trips ended, I've never heard whatever happened to KNEU-FM [sic].
I thought for a while that it might have become what is now KSSB-FM which, per memory, started out at 100.5 mHz in the early 80s, moved to 100.9 during the 1990s, and is now at 96.3 mHz with a regional Mexican format and Licensed to Calipatria with pretty much no signal to El Centro and little signal to Glamis. However, I can't find any history on KSSB-FM to confirm or deny this.
So, has my memory been playing tricks on me? (I note that KNEU-AM is still very much alive in Roosevelt, Utah, at 1250 kHz) or did KNEU-FM actually exist back in November of 1974. And, if it did exist, was it (now) XHPF-FM that ultimately sealed the station's doom.
I've said all of this to lead to the following question. During our 1974 trip, I heard something on FM based out of El Centro, California, that I've never heard again. It was all English with one of the Drake-Shenalt Hit Parade formats, and at the time, it was one of the few stations there I could listen to fulltime. The frequency, by memory, was either 102.3 or 102.5, and my memory says that the callsign I heard was KNEU-FM. The only local FM station heard in the Imperial Valley at the time was the 103.3 station (now XHVG) which played English AC with Spanish announcers.
I never heard the station again. When we visited Glamis during Thanksgiving of 1975, Mexicali had added an all-Spanish station at 101.9 and KXO-FM had begun at 107.5 mHz with an easy listening format. And while I've ridden through the area several times after the Glamis trips ended, I've never heard whatever happened to KNEU-FM [sic].
I thought for a while that it might have become what is now KSSB-FM which, per memory, started out at 100.5 mHz in the early 80s, moved to 100.9 during the 1990s, and is now at 96.3 mHz with a regional Mexican format and Licensed to Calipatria with pretty much no signal to El Centro and little signal to Glamis. However, I can't find any history on KSSB-FM to confirm or deny this.
So, has my memory been playing tricks on me? (I note that KNEU-AM is still very much alive in Roosevelt, Utah, at 1250 kHz) or did KNEU-FM actually exist back in November of 1974. And, if it did exist, was it (now) XHPF-FM that ultimately sealed the station's doom.