It sounds like Bustos Media has some technical changes in the works for KZTM on 102.9. A few weeks ago they changed the city of license of KZTM from Centralia to McKenna. Now it sounds like they intend to move the broadcast site from Capitol Peak to South Mountain. I'm not an engineer, but I was under the impression that the space for broadcast equipment was a fairly limited resource at South Mountain. Assuming that there are no logistical issues with this move, they probably stand to improve their reception in Seattle proper. From the business side, it's probably advantageous to give 102.9 the best chance that it can to provide city-grade reception in Seattle before/if Lotus makes any big changes in the market with Spanish programming. Once the move is complete, South Mountain will host KOMO-FM, KDDS, KZTM, KJET, and KLSY. The only station that will be left on Capitol Peak will be KXXO, where they moved a few years ago to their new broadcast facility.
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Technical Changes Coming to KZTM
- Thread starter fordranger797
- Start date
I understand the need for city to identify in a legal ID, but it seems like the FCC has a very archaic way of handling this. If a radio station wants to identify as a Seattle radio station, and provides coverage to Seattle, I don't see why they shouldn't be able to specify "Seattle" in their legal ID. Maybe it would be better just to specify the closest community to the transmitter site.
It is indeed very archaic, for so many reasons, especially now that there's no requirement that a station have a "main studio," or indeed any studio or physical presence, in the community of license. Literally the only thing a station has to do for its community of license now is to provide a certain signal level there, and to say its name once an hour - and the legal ID requirement is awfully archaic these days, too.
Even the FCC has acknowledged that, to some extent. There's now an "urbanized area policy" that more or less considers stations licensed somewhere in a Census Bureau-defined urbanized area to be serving the urbanized area, not the specific community of license. In theory, it wouldn't be hard now for a station licensed to Tacoma or Bellevue to get relicensed to "Seattle" if it thought it was worth going through the trouble. In practice, most stations seem to have decided it's not worth the trouble.
Speaking of technical changes in the market, didn't West Tiger return to full strength in Spring 2019? I was just looking at Radio Locator a couple days ago, and it looks like all the stations effected by the fire up there have gotten new licenses, most granted only about a month ago. What would be the reason for this? Also I don't understand why KBKS and KJAQ now use a haat of 696 M while everyone else uses 698? Shouldn't they all use the same number if they all transmit from the same antenna?
I'm not qualified to offer this answer ... but likely difference in where the transmitting antenna is placed on the tower. They may share the tower but not the antenna.
I’m no engineer, but it makes sense that the antenna placement would be a few meters above or below a separate antenna. Those transmission towers are always loaded with antennas top to bottom, spaced a few meters apart.
Of course, KMNT now is on 104.3, and still has a pretty darn good signal for 2,300 watts. As for 102.9, they've historically been one of the strongest FM signals from the south sound with their tower on Cap Peak. I'm not sure if the move really gives them a bigger footprint, but it does move the operation closer to the metro area and gives them a slightly better LOS into Seattle.
Should be interesting, as it will move them a little north of the Olympia area than they were before. Same power, I suspect? Those Olympia stations all get out well (with some multipath towards King County) so I don't see much change to the signal wherever the Hispanic population is located.
Just curious, was the old KMNT 'Country Mountain' transmitter near Centralia or on Capitol Peak? Or was it on the hill near Napavine that now holds Live 95?
Just curious, was the old KMNT 'Country Mountain' transmitter near Centralia or on Capitol Peak? Or was it on the hill near Napavine that now holds Live 95?
My understanding is that the rent is quite high for the Weyerhaeuser-owned tower (and space in the shack) that they are currently on at Capital Peak — they already own KDDS located at South Mountain, so that makes sense to co-locate.
As for KMNT, my understanding is that when it first launched as KGME-FM back in the 60’s it was located on or near the KACS tower near Cook’s Hill in Centralia (fun fact that KELA-AM had a 4-tower directional array all planned out to go up there in the 80s with a nice power bump to around 20kw but that never panned out) —I don’t believe it was the same tower as KACS (it may have been — maybe that’s who they bought it from?) but I remember seeing old documents that made it look super close… at some point when they went for a full Class C (early 80s?) they moved it to Crego Hill SW of Chehalis at 100kw (next door to the KCKA-TV tower) where it stayed ever since — moving to the 104.3 license when Clear Channel did the big swap to Capital Peak in 2005.
The 102.9 signal is absolutely awesome for the rimshot that it is compared to why is on South Mountain — I also feel like it is cleaner as well, but that could be processing/transmitter/STL — and while South Mountain may have a bit more multipath to the south, as previously mentioned, it has better line of sight directly into Seattle proper.
As for KMNT, my understanding is that when it first launched as KGME-FM back in the 60’s it was located on or near the KACS tower near Cook’s Hill in Centralia (fun fact that KELA-AM had a 4-tower directional array all planned out to go up there in the 80s with a nice power bump to around 20kw but that never panned out) —I don’t believe it was the same tower as KACS (it may have been — maybe that’s who they bought it from?) but I remember seeing old documents that made it look super close… at some point when they went for a full Class C (early 80s?) they moved it to Crego Hill SW of Chehalis at 100kw (next door to the KCKA-TV tower) where it stayed ever since — moving to the 104.3 license when Clear Channel did the big swap to Capital Peak in 2005.
The 102.9 signal is absolutely awesome for the rimshot that it is compared to why is on South Mountain — I also feel like it is cleaner as well, but that could be processing/transmitter/STL — and while South Mountain may have a bit more multipath to the south, as previously mentioned, it has better line of sight directly into Seattle proper.
Oh yes — KITI-FM is located on Buckhorn Mountain, which is closer to Winlock — it’s a bit more dead south of Centralia/Chehalis than Crego which overlooks Boistfort and is slightly more SW of town.
As an aside — I’ve always wondered why none of the stations down that way ever went to Baw Faw Peak — also past Boistfort, similar direction as Crego — but nearly as high up as Capital Peak.
As an aside — I’ve always wondered why none of the stations down that way ever went to Baw Faw Peak — also past Boistfort, similar direction as Crego — but nearly as high up as Capital Peak.
That’s a very good point. It would make sense to locate 102.9 on south mountain with KDDS rather than pay hefty rental fees to Wayerhauser. Bustos is in great shape with this asset no matter how you look at it, because KZTM is really the only station using 102.9 around in Pacific Northwest. Furthermore, I don’t see a scenario where any station begins using 102.9 in the footprint they want to keep for themselves. All of the other signals on South Mountain have to deal with very strong co-channels originating from BC. While it’s probably safe to assume that all of these channels would have to deal with significant signal issues by the time they get north of Lynwood anyway, these co-channels deliver the final blow.
102.9 has never had much co-channel slop to deal with - the KBRC translator fired up a few years ago, and before that the only station up that way was KLOI-LP on Lopez Island in the San Juans. The others do have Vancouver interference above Lynnwood and south Everett on I-5 and they are totally dominate by Marysville.
It's definitely true that the the absolute limit for where you can pick up these south sound signals is around Marysville. It will be pretty interesting to see how far 102.9 gets out from their new site to the northwest. For south sound signals, I think KXXO is the only one in existence that was around before a co-channel fired up.
I want to say it was in the very early 90’s when the branding change took place the first time to K103… my time there was early 2000’s when it changed to Country 102.9, which it stayed until the frequency swap in 2005. Jacor bought the station from the Chitel (sp?) family in 1996, Clear Channel bought Jacor around 2000, and orchestrated the whole frequency swap situation to get their hands on that big Class C license in 2005 — and spun it off to BiCoastal Media in 2007 as a C3 on 104.3 where it has remained. The rumor was always that they got it to Capital Peak and still weren’t truly happy with the signal — even though between 102.9 and 104.9 out in Eatonville which was the other of their two rimshots, 104.9 always perplexed me as the “basically useless” one.
However, there are situations where coverage of a part of a market is profitable.
The "suburban" NYC markets of Long Island and the several NJ areas that are surveyed as "embedded" markets in Nielsen have local or regional businesses that can't use full NYC signals due to cost efficiency.
If there are areas in some... but not all markets... where partial coverage can be monetized if a sub-market populated by area merchants who can't effectively use full market stations are plentiful and radio-friendly.
But in most markets, this opportunity just does not exist.
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