TheBuzz
TheBuzz
Hawaii's only 50,000 watt radio station is back on the air, sort of. "KAIM-AM (870) is running a loop right now of praise music while we have a petition before the FCC to relocate over here," said General Manager TJ Malievsky. Radio station KAIM
returns to the air,
but very, very quietlyThe Molokai-based transmission equipment for the former Bible-broadcasting blowtorch was fired up to a barely audible 1,000 watts in November, but will remain there "only for a season," Malievsky said.
"It's not really meant to be on for commercial purposes, it's really meant to keep the signal going.
"What we had to do is put it on the air in a very small wattage situation to fulfill license requirements to keep it on the air for another year," he said.
KAIM-AM is owned by Calif.-based Salem Communications Corp.
The plan is to relocate the transmitter to Salem's tower in Kunia, which also radiates the signals of KHNR-AM 650 and KHCM-AM 940. Malievsky hopes to resume operation of the station on Oahu at 10,000 watts and believes federal approval will come within the next couple months. The format has not been finalized, he said.
Of Salem's other stations, KGU-AM 760 is beamed from tower at Kewalo Basin, while the antenna for KAIM-FM 95.5 is in Palehua, home to the broadcast equipment of numerous other FM stations.
Salem took KAIM-AM dark on Dec. 31, 2001, to accomplish two goals. The company wanted to eliminate the $12,000 to $13,000 monthly electric bill for the Molokai facility. KGU's electricity costs about $1,000 per month, station officials said at the time. Salem also wanted to boost its KRLA-AM 870 in Los Angeles to 50,000 watts, but there was concern the Hawaii and L.A. signals would interfere with one another. The Los Angeles population reached by KRLA-AM clearly provides much greater revenue potential for Salem than Hawaii's KAIM-AM audience.
KAIM was formerly owned by the Minnesota-based Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, which boosted the station's power to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ to the islands of Hawaii and the Pacific. It sold KAIM-AM/FM to the publicly traded Salem in October of 1999, but still owns the Molokai land and transmitter building.
At the time the company announced plans to take the powerful AM off the air, then-General Manager Doug Campbell said there were no plans to bring it back.
Erika Engle is a reporter with the Star-Bulletin.
Call 529-4302, fax 529-4750 or write to Erika Engle,
Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 500 Ala Moana Blvd., No. 7-210,
Honolulu, HI 96813. She can also be reached
at: eengle@starbulletin.com