Mercer Island school station gets new home
By BILL VIRGIN
P-I REPORTER
After years of wrangling and legal maneuvering, KMIH-FM moves to its new home on the dial this Sunday.
The Mercer Island School District station had been operating at 104.5 until a commercial station in The Dalles, Ore., also on 104.5, won permission from the Federal Communications Commission to change its city of license to Covington in southeast King County. With a higher class of license, KMCQ-FM's move would have effectively knocked KMIH off the air, because of the possibility of interference.
KMIH fought back, with a petition drive and enlisting the support of Sen. Maria Cantwell.
Eventually KMIH and KMCQ's owners worked out a compromise. KMIH would move down the dial to 88.9 -- in a part of the FM spectrum generally reserved for non-commercial stations. (A third station -- the Bellevue School District's KASB-FM -- also agreed to relocate from 89.3 to 89.9 to accommodate KMIH.)
KMIH also hopes to launch a translator in Seattle on 94.5 in late September.
"Nobody is more happy than me to get rid of this animal," said Nick De Vogel, KMIH's general manager, referring to the uncertainty that has been hanging over the station since 2002. "We can go back and focus on what we want," including working with students (about 45 at Mercer Island High School participate at any one time) and developing more community programming.
"I can't say enough about all the people who helped us out" in keeping KMIH on the air and finding it a new home on the dial, he added.
KMIH's format is rhythmic contemporary hits; it markets itself as Hot Jamz Radio.
KMCQ-FM, meanwhile, will make its debut in the Seattle market by the first or second week of September, said Hal Rose, executive vice president of Broadcast management and Technology LLC, the Dallas-based parent of the station. "We still need to test our signal."
Listeners who tune in to the testing may hear "some different things we use to test," Rose said, but when it begins operating for real the format will be oldies. It had been an adult-contemporary station when it operated in The Dalles.
Rose defines oldies as "the best of the '60s and '70s, a little bit of '80s." It's a format that recently lost a station in this market when Bonneville International flipped KBSG-FM/97.3 to a simulcast of news and talk on KIRO-AM/710.
"We viewed that as an opportunity to fill that format hole," Rose said. However, KMCQ will still find the format plenty crowded with such competitors as KJR-FM/95.7, KJAQ-FM/96.5, KZOK-FM/102.5 and KFMY-FM/97.7.
As for who the announcers or hosts will be on KMCQ, Rose will only say that those announcements are "coming soon to a station near you."
In other radio notes:
Local TV legends J.P. Patches and Gertrude (Chris Wedes and Bob Newman) are the guests on "Weekday" at 10 a.m. Thursday on KUOW-FM/94.9.
P-I reporter Bill Virgin can be reached at 206-448-8319 or billvirgin@seattlepi.com.
Bill Virgin's Radio Beat, Thursdays in the Seattle P-I