KMNY Sends a Signal : Anaheim Firm With Tiny Financial Radio Station Has Nationwide Goal

News of the financial world--both trifling and earth-shattering--spews from tiny KMNY-AM radio around the clock.

The station doesn’t have much of an audience yet, but many of those who do listen are fanatics. One Van Nuys listener reportedly tunes in each night just before he goes to sleep, in hopes the constant stream of financial facts will penetrate his subconscious.

The fledgling station, which transmits its 5,000-watt signal from Pomona, is the flagship of Money Radio, an Anaheim firm that wants to create a nationwide network for its services, which are keyed to stockbrokers, devout investors and mere dabblers.

And on Friday, 2 years after it went on the air as the nation’s first all-financial news station, Money Radio moved a little closer to that goal with the announcement that it will be be acquired by an investment group that intends to take it public.

The buyout by Spectrum Enterprises, KMNY-AM, a blind pool created in 1987 by a Costa Mesa attorney, will give Money Radio a market value of about $6 million.

Plans for Growth

The new capital will allow Money Radio, which was founded by 1,300 investors who put up a total of $4.6 million, to grow from its KMNY and network of 15 affiliates that pick up some of the daily programming to more than 100 affiliates by the end of the year, said Vera Gold, a Money Radio founder.

But so far, Money Radio has yet to report a profit, its concept is still unproven and many in the radio business said they’ve never even heard of the station.

Gold, who hosts a daily call-in show, said the company has not been profitable because it has been putting all of its money back into operations. Money Radio has a staff of 70.

In addition to its Anaheim broadcasters, the company relies on an international and unpaid “pool of correspondents,” including several investment newsletter writers and some American bankers in Japan, Gold said.

Gold declined to estimate the size of the Money Radio audience. But those investors and brokers who tune in tend to be faithful. And investors said Money Radio is a good place to hear about emerging new companies seeking investment.

“You might consider it dry. I don’t. I’m informed,” said Fred Lacy, vice president of Cruttenden & Co., a Newport Beach brokerage.

Audience Reaction

Richard Genovese, a director of International Movie Group, a film distributor in Beverly Hills, said after he discussed his firm on a Money Radio program, the company was inundated with callers wanting to know more.

Genovese, who also works as an investor relations specialist, said he plans next to go on Money Radio to talk about a Canadian water bottler that exports its product to Japan and California.

Gold, a former public relations official of the Pacific Stock Exchange, said listeners are told when they are hearing a paid advertisement. And guests on the talk shows are not obliged to buy air time on the station.

Many radio listeners have not tuned their radios high enough to find KMNY at 1600 on the AM dial. The signal is not heard in central Los Angeles, but can be heard almost anywhere in Orange County and in much of Los Angeles County.

“I’ve not heard of the station,” said radio industry consultant Robert Schulberg in Los Angeles. Schulberg said the audience for stations as specialized as KMNY are tiny, at best.