Palomar Hopes to Talk Loudly and Carry an FCC License

Palomar College has plans to raise its radio voice a hundredfold to reach the 500,000 residents of North County loud and clear.

The two-year community college applied to the Federal Communications Commission on March 8 for an educational FM radio license. It would operate from its college studios in San Marcos, where students now practice their skills on a select cable FM audience of about 5,000.

Russell Jackson, college communications instructor and manager of the station, KKSM-FM, said changes in the FCC regulations last fall permit Palomar to apply for a spot on the airwaves that belonged to a Temecula station that has been off the air since 1983.

“It was luck, really, that we discovered the opportunity” to take over Temecula’s 88.9 spot on the FM radio dial, Jackson said.

If luck continues on Palomar’s side, the college could eventually be sending its signal the width and breadth of North County and south into Kearny Mesa.

Even more fortuitous is Palomar’s good neighbor, KGMG of Oceanside, which has agreed to share its transmitting tower location on Mt. San Marcos with the nearby college.

“Standing at the foot of the (KGMG) transmitter tower, I can see Palomar Mountain and into the Temecula Valley, the ocean and far down into the City of San Diego,” Jackson said.

Figuring this line-of-sight range will be increased when the Palomar antenna reaches more than 100 feet higher than his viewpoint, Jackson predicted that few residents in the fast-growing area will be unable to tune in to the music and messages the college hopes to send out.

But, Palomar administrators caution, it won’t happen overnight. FCC bureaucrats are not expected to decide whether to accept or deny the Palomar application this year.

“Our attorney in Washington (Richard Helmick) told us not to expect to hear from the FCC for a year,” Jackson said.

After that, if the permit is granted, “there’s still negotiating to do and construction work,” Jackson said, and it would be two to three years before the station went North County-wide.

When and if it goes on the air, Palomar’s will be the only local non-commercial station in the area.

San Diego State University has KPBS, a Public Broadcasting System affiliate that reaches most of the county, but Palomar would provide the only local non-commercial programming for such diverse North County groups as the nine Indian reservations; the large bilingual, Spanish-speaking population, and the equally large numbers of senior citizens and retired residents.

Palomar College sports events, concerts and news would be a part of the station’s offerings, Jackson said.

“The local commercial radio stations do a good job of reaching North County, but this station would be able to broadcast a wider diversity of programming” for the area’s specialized audiences, he said.

Palomar would not be in competition with its big sister, UC San Diego, for a spot on the FM band, Jackson said, because the two campuses are not within the same radio ranges and UCSD--which is attempting to obtain an FCC license with the help of the commercial radio station KSDO--could not use the Temecula station’s slot on the dial.

Another Bidder

“The signal wouldn’t even reach the La Jolla campus,” Jackson said.

There is at least one other bidder for the license, however. A former program director for the Temecula station is bidding for the right to reactivate it. There may be others in the running, but Palomar administrators haven’t heard of any.

About 50 Palomar students now operate the campus station as part of their training in broadcasting classes. Advanced students gain on-air experience and receive feedback from their audience--which receives the signal over a wide area of North County, but only on specially rigged sets and Dimension Cable Co. hookups.

“It sounds like bragging, but some of our students do as good a job or better than the local commercial stations,” Jackson said.

Current students will have left the Palomar campus before the new FM station is ready to roll, he said, “but I think that students in the future will have an even better opportunity to learn professional skills needed to make it in radio--all the way to the top.”