New Radio Station Offsets Lack of Power With Lots of Altitude

“Friends, Ramonans and backcountrymen, lend us your ears!!” is the corny come-on for a yet-to-be-born radio station in the mountains near Julian.

KBNN, the possible future voice of San Diego’s backcountry, decided to make an on-air test today to find out just how many people out there can hear it, if and when the FM station hits the airwaves for real.

So, Andy Smith and his colleagues climbed a mountain and fired up their 63-watt transmitter to find out if the world is listening and, more important, if it can hear KBNN if it tunes in to 100.1 on its FM dial.

More Puny Than a Porch Light

A 63-watt signal is less powerful than an average porch light, Smith acknowledges, but he thinks the mile-high location of the transmitter should make up for the puny wattage.

From 6 a.m. until sign-off at 4 p.m. today, the KBNN crew will be broadcasting from high atop Volcan Mountain near Julian, offering a program of music sprinkled with taped messages from local folk and celebrities, plus pleas for listeners to phone in on toll-free lines to report the location from which they received the station’s signal and the quality of the reception.

“We also want people to call in if they can’t hear the signal,” Smith said, “to give us an idea of just where we are and where we are not.”

Listeners won’t have any trouble picking out KBNN from its higher-powered neighbors on the FM band. The station has selected for its one-day test music of a different flavor than the competition’s Top 40 tunes. In the first 15 minutes of each hour, the fare will be Sousa marches, followed by a 15-minute segment of Strauss waltzes. At the half-hour, barbershop quartets take over. The final 15 minutes feature Big Band music.

KBNN was born on Labor Day nearly six years ago in Smith’s kitchen. Harold Schachter, Smith’s friend and partner in the enterprise, was bemoaning the lack of a local voice in the community, aside from Ramona’s weekly newspaper.

Schachter, then a member of the Ramona Municipal Water District board, repeated to Smith a remark of a fellow Kiwanian: “What this town needs is a radio station.”

Smith, now a high school English teacher, then confessed to Schachter that his lifelong dream had been to run a radio station. The planning and dreaming began. Nuevo Communications Inc. was formed.

Schachter acknowledges that neither he nor Smith, nor a third Nuevo partner--John Singer, who joined the team in 1985--”had any expertise whatsoever” in the radio business in those early days.

Schachter spotted a course in a UCLA class catalogue that seemed heaven-sent, and promptly enrolled in “Owning Your Own Radio Station” during the winter term of 1983. The course wasn’t as tailor-made as it sounded since it was geared to the high-rollers with big bankrolls who were looking to buy an already-operating station, Schachter said, “but I learned a lot, anyway.”

KBNN, being a shoestring operation, originally was envisioned by its founders as an AM station. The three soon found that all the AM slots were taken, and they turned to FM. According to their consultant, Bob Gonsett, that was a smart decision.

Gonsett explained that AM stations don’t have the high fidelity of FM signals. AM signals, he said, change pattern and strength, while FM signals stay pure and clear, an important asset in an advertising medium.

What started out as a pipe dream became a reality a year ago. Nuevo Communications received its construction permit from the Federal Communications Commission, prevailing over more than half a dozen other competitors from all around the country.

“The post office Jeep pulled up the driveway, and when I got that envelope, I was almost afraid to open it,” Smith said. “But it was our permit, and the next night we had a picnic in Dos Picos Park for families and friends and our engineer, and toasted our success.”

Facing an 18-month deadline to go on the air, the three Ramonans went back to work on engineering, equipment purchasing, site negotiations, programming, public relations and dozens of other details in order to begin broadcasts by this Christmas Eve.

Then one of the other hopefuls, a Midwestern couple, appealed the dismissal of their application, which canceled the deadline for KBNN and eliminated the time pressure on Smith, Schachter and Singer. It will probably be months before the FCC rules on the appeal, and the Ramonans are confident they will win, Smith said. “And we can sure use the extra time.”

Programming for the station will be tailored to the territory, said Smith, who is interim program director.

“With a commitment to service for the mountain and backcountry communities, we’re going to try to do a little bit of everything,” he said.

The 24-hour menu will offer early risers “comfortable music” for greeting the day and their morning commutes and special programs for backcountry youth who are always complaining that there’s nothing to do in Ramona and Julian. There will even be a backcountry reporter to cover on-the-spot events. Lost dog, cat and kid reports. Cooking shows. Traffic bulletins. Weather forecasts. Fire warnings. You name it, and KBNN will consider it.

Might Add Aztecs, Padres

Schachter is researching reports of backcountry residents who say they can’t tune in to night broadcasts of the San Diego State University Aztec football games or the San Diego Padres baseball games because the nighttime AM signals just don’t carry into the hills. If that’s so, Schachter said, the games would be fine additions to KBNN programming.

Just who will be able to tune in on this homespun station will be better known after the Nuevo execs tally up the telephone data from today’s test run.

Theoretically, KBNN should reign over the whole North County in a 50-mile circle from near Westmorland to seven miles out to sea off Carlsbad, down to Tierrasanta and over to Rancho Bernardo, Rancho Penasquitos, Rancho Santa Fe and maybe Del Mar. Realistically, the mountainous terrain may stop the signal short of some of those places.

That’s why Singer spent the night on Volcan Mountain last night and why Smith and Schachter arose at about 4 this morning to fire up their temporary transmitter and send out Sousa marches and Big Band sounds, to find out if anybody out there is listening.

The toll-free telephone numbers for reporting KBNN’s listening turf are:

North Coast communities, 632-1001; North County inland, 941-KBNN (5266); Ramona and East County, 789-6370; east suburban San Diego, 579-6144; greater San Diego, 566-KBNN (5266); Imperial County, Riverside County and more distant San Diego County areas, 1-800-245-1001; and Julian, 765-2620.