I have to suspect some of the small South Texas towns that gained a radio station in the last auction might have been speculating on the shale oil boom that was just beginning to erupt in some of these little communities. Sabinal at least has something going for it aside from oil. Other communities where one, two or more frequencies were won are not that fortunate. Even so, there's not much there. As I understand it, the community cannot support a newspaper dedicated to the community (in the past the Hondo paper created a page in their paper, maybe two, to cover Sabinal news...I believe the Leakey paper covers Sabinal as one of their half dozen communities they cover now).
I do not know the licensee but I suspect the idea is to move the station, increase the power and serve a larger area. I have seen a couple of such stations come on at such low power and short sticks eventually upgrade, say, to a C3 and move off to a bigger town while still putting a city grade over the currently licensed community.
Some stations in that part of Texas barely scrape by. I knew the managing partner of the long gone first Cotulla FM. At best they did $5,000 a month in the 1980s and that came mostly out of town. I have heard $40,000 to $60,000 a year was not out of the question in the early 1990s in some towns. And those towns were at least triple the size and economic activity as Sabinal. A Christian non-comm in one community a bit bigger than Sabinal usually did about $14,000-$15,000 a year with one year a bit over $19,000 before they finally sold the station (most funding was from the sale of Underwriting).
In the interim, I'm sure they can find a Christian broadcaster to lease such a station for what it takes the licensee to operate and cover their bills.
