TheBuzz Erika Engle

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Station owner nets $1 million out of swap

KORL-AM 690 and KHCM-AM 1180 will swap ownership this summer in a deal that will net Kauai-based KORL ownerHochman-McCann Hawaii Inc.$1 million.

California-basedSalem Communications Corp., which owns KHCM, announced the intended swap and cash payout along with first-quarter results yesterday morning.

Each company will keep its employees, formats and call letters. The latter will migrate when the deal is done, pending filings with and approvals from the Federal Communications Commission.

"It's a really good deal for us," said George Hochman, president of Hochman-McCann.

The company paid $550,000 for the 10,000-watt KORL in 2003, "and we're selling it for a million plus another radio station," he said.

A 10,000-watt signal provides much greater broadcast coverage than a 5,000-watt signal but, "We don't really need 10,000 watts," Hochman said.

The audience for KORL's Filipino and Hispanic programming is primarily around West Oahu, where the signal from 1180's Leeward tower is the strongest, he said.

Salem, on the other hand, is pleased to be getting the 10,000-watt facility at 690 AM.

"We've been a little hamstrung, with three AM radio stations and only one of them has a full-market signal -- that's been KGU (AM 760)," said Steve Miller, general manager of Salem Media of Hawaii Inc.

"We're trying to improve our situation by being able to improve the ... market coverage of our signal," he said.

KHCM will continue its country music format when it moves to 690 AM, Miller said.

"We are definitely committed to the country format here ... there's going to be a lot of people who are happy."

Did we mention Hochman was happy too?

"We're swapping frequencies and they're putting a nice check in our pocketbook. God bless America," Hochman laughed.

"We're going to pour the money back into Hawaii radio," he said. The company has a license and construction permit to build KRUD-AM 1130, the call letters of which Hochman intends to change.

"We want to build our own tower site. ... There's a need in the community for another tower on Oahu," Hochman said. "We're serving ethnic markets that need service." Hochman-McCann has until December 2008 to get that station up and running.

Separately, Bill Mays, a partner in Hochman-McCann, has another partner, Bill Shirk, with whom he formedShirk-Mays LLC.

Shirk-Mays is loping through the labyrinthine process of developing an FM station for Kahului, Maui. The FCC yesterday indicated it was prepared to grant Shirk-Mays its construction permit for the station, pending receipt of the remainder of the company's winning bid in a January FCC auction.

Low blow fixed

IT was a heart-stopping Saturday afternoon for fight fans.

Before the first undercard even got underway, in advance of the 154-pound championship fight between former champion Oscar De La Hoya and brash belt-holder Ricardo Mayorga,Oceanic Time Warner Cable lost the feed from Las Vegas.

At 3:06 p.m., legendary boxing trainer and manager Emanuel Steward was cut off in mid-commentary -- and the TV screen went blank for nearly two agonizing hours.

Calls swamped the Oceanic customer care center, which had no explanation for the statewide outage outrage.

"Unfortunately we took a power surge from HECO and it knocked out our UPS (uninterruptible power supply) ... and the back-up unit," said Nate Smith, president of Oceanic, referring to the company equipment that received and relayed the signal.

Smith did not have a final count on how many Oceanic customers had ordered the event at $49.95, but said Oceanic is giving a prorated credit back to purchasers.

Nobody in the customer care center threw in the towel due the overload of angry calls, "and happily we didn't lose the main fight," he said.

The signal was restored right before 5 p.m., just in time for the last two rounds of the second undercard.

Adrenalized and eager sweet-science-savorers would then hear announcer Jim Lampley describe the undercard as less than spectacular. Whew.

Hawaiian Electric Co.checked the log for Sat., May 6 for trouble calls and alarms "and could not find anything between 3 and 4 p.m.," said Jose Dizon, a professional engineer and HECO's senior communications consultant.

No outages or "voltage transients" (surges) were found to explain the problem. "We would have flagged it," he said.