Public radio selling Hawaii Public Radio is selling KIFO AM 1380, its only AM station, for $500,000. The deal is expected to close before the end of February, according to HPR President Michael Titterton.
AM for $500,000
The Hawaii station will change
frequencies when the prospective
owner from Utah assumes controlBy Erika Engle
eengle@starbulletin.comSeparately, the station's frequency will change to 1370 to accomplish two goals: enabling a station in Washington state to redirect its signal without interference and eliminating interference problems suffered by KIFO.
Half the proceeds from the sale would be put toward debt retirement, while the remainder would be used to re-engineer KIPO (89.3 FM), he said.
Retrieval of information from the buyer's side has been more difficult, with inconsistencies turning up along the way.
The sale negotiations took several months and were carried out between Titterton and E. Morgan Skinner Jr., president of Utah-based Legacy Communications.
However, the buyer is Diamond Broadcasting Corp., also based in Utah, headed by President Jeffrey Bate. He is Skinner's son-in-law.
Bate owns no other radio stations, but the Federal Communications Commission has granted him construction permits, and he has applications pending for at least four, and possibly five, AM radio stations in Utah and Idaho, according to the FCC Web site and interviews with those associated with the transaction.
Neither he nor his company could be found in an online search of state of Hawaii business registrations, and Bate was not available for comment. A call to the company's Utah phone number netted a recording, "At the customer's request (the number) has been temporarily disconnected."
A search of online business registration records for the state of Utah identified Skinner, not Bate, as Diamond Broadcasting's registered agent.
Skinner's name also popped up several times in a search of the FCC Web site, not just as a licensee, but as a licensee against whom the agency had levied fines.
Despite deregulation of the radio industry over the years, the FCC maintains an enforcement bureau to investigate complaints and monitor compliance. FCC records show some of Legacy's mainland stations have been fined thousands of dollars for various violations; those stations have recently been sold.
In Hawaii, Legacy registered to do business as KBUG Inc. and owns the license for 1170 AM Honolulu, formerly a Japanese-language station known as KOHO. The purchase involved only the license as KOHO had gone "dark," or off the air, and had lost its studios and broadcast equipment in troubles suffered by its previous ownership. The call letters have been changed numerous times since April of 2000: to KBUG, KBNZ, KZEZ, back to KBNZ, and in January they were changed again to KENT.
A radio station is required to be in continuous operation or it faces forfeiture of its broadcast license, but there has been no continuous programming on 1170 AM. Legacy has sought and been granted so-called "Special Temporary Authority" on multiple occasions, allowing it to remain silent, citing difficulty in finding a transmitter site.
The Star-Bulletin obtained from the FCC a mailgram apparently faxed to the agency by Legacy's law firm "confirming" that the station had resumed broadcasting on Sunday, Aug. 5, 2001, pursuant to the STA issued three days prior. The mailgram bears the name of Chief Engineer Bill Traue and lists Legacy Communications' address in St. George, Utah, as well as the Corporate Office Centers at Waterfront Plaza in Honolulu.
However, according to Waterfront Business Center Manager Tracey Lake, the company had not been a tenant in the office suites since at least April when she started her job there.
Further, Traue, contacted at his home in Idaho, was unfamiliar with the mailgram that bore his name. He's never been to Hawaii and had done "no hands-on work" for the station here, he said. He surmised his name had been used as a "rubber stamp."
The station's latest STA was granted Sept. 19 with the caveat that its broadcast license "will automatically expire as a matter of law if broadcast operations do not commence by Aug. 16, 2002."
Skinner responded to Star-Bulletin queries but declined to speak on the record.
According to Titterton, the purchase agreement calls for KENT's broadcast equipment to be installed on the KIFO tower near the Waiawa Correctional Center. The tower also hosts KLHT AM 1040, which is owned by Calvary Chapel of Honolulu, but the church has requested permission to move its equipment to a tower on Dillingham Boulevard, according to broadcast engineer and Broadcast Resources President Ernie Nearman. He performs engineering work for KLHT and other stations.
He called the Waiawa site a "terrible location," noting KLHT is unable to broadcast at its authorized 10,000-watt strength because the resulting signal would interfere with the FCC monitoring station between the tower and the bulk of its desired audience in town.
"My understanding is that (Skinner) wants to co-locate with KIFO," said public radio's Titterton. He added the switch from 1380 kilohertz to 1370 will enable a station in Washington state to redirect its signal without interference from the Hawaii station.
It will also, Nearman said, eliminate interference problems suffered by KIFO as its position at 1380 on the dial "is the second harmonic of 690, KQMQ AM, so when you're anywhere in the area of Kewalo basin or Kakaako, it just blasts them out; you start picking up the Disney Channel instead of Public Radio," he said.
The purchase requires FCC approval.
Hawaii Public Radio's "future is not in AM," but in expansion of KIPO FM, Titterton said. The organization plans to re-engineer the station and to make its news and information programming "heavily interactive -- as much as we can make it as we build repeaters (on the neighbor islands)," he said.