12-Year-Old Obsession Nears Reality for Writer-Turned-TV Station Owner

John Willkie insists that I was present 12 years ago when his obsession was born.

As Willkie remembers it, he arose groggy from a nap on the couch in the press room at San Diego City Hall, saw a story in the Evening Tribune, and then said something like:

“As God is my witness, I shall never be without a federal license for a low-power television station again.”

I cannot confirm being present at the creation.

But I can confirm that John Willkie was a common sight (and sound) during the two years I was posted by my then-employer to the City Hall press room to watch over the municipal government while Pete Wilson was out of town campaigning for higher office.

Willkie was an ex-San Diego City College student, a free-lance journalist and tipster for local television news. He slept on the torn and rock-hard Naugahyde couch. He often arrived at City Hall barefoot.

When awake he talked incessantly of getting a license from the Federal Communications Commission to run a low-power television station (that is, one that covers only part of a market).

He’s an intense, intellectually combative fellow. I’ve always thought he looked a little like Stephen King.

The press room is a cramped, windowless place about the size of a decent La Jolla closet. Willkie talked so much about low-power television that I said (or maybe I just thought of saying) that I didn’t want to hear another damn word until he got the damn license.

That was in 1982. For a (joyous) decade I heard nothing from him.

Then, a couple of days ago, Willkie called and said he wanted to come over and talk to me about low-power television. He said the license is nearly in hand.

It turned out that he and Pete Wilson had moved to Washington about the same time.

Willkie moved to Washington to be near the FCC mothership and herd/goad/prod the bureaucrats to act on his license application.

He worked as a free-lance writer, bicycle messenger, communications engineer and computer programmer. He “bummed around” and collected unemployment insurance.

He started a newsletter (twice). He discovered that nobody wanted to hear about low-power television (I could have told him that).

He says the FCC caught him using one of its phones to conduct business and made him pay up. He didn’t mention anything about FCC couches.

“It was a frustrating nine years,” said Willkie, 38, a native San Diegan. He moved back to San Diego just before the America’s Cup to do some free-lancing.

Somehow he’s got FCC permission to build the trappings of a station; if he can do that, the license could be forthcoming.

Of the several dozen applications from San Diego, Willkie’s is one of only two to get even tentative approval.

He hopes to have Channel 63 on line by August, visible from Clairemont to the border, Point Loma to La Mesa.

He plans to start with 12 hours of the Home Shopping Club (“It pays the bills.”) and 12 of local sports, news and “provocative adult-oriented programming.”

“We’re going to explore the envelope of allowable programming,” he says. “The general idea is to raise hell, have fun and make money.”

He’s looking for investors for his Civic Light Inc. Low-power television is cheap but it isn’t free.

He says he has no plans to quit, money or no. Surprise surprise.

“I’m persistent,” he said.

How about stubborn and obsessive?

“Those aren’t good marketing words,” he answered.

Overdressed for the Job

People and their gigs.

* Bare facts.

San Diego comic ventriloquist Joe Gandelman will do a 45-minute show on the July 4th weekend at the Glen Eden Sun Club in Corona, one of the nation’s top “family-oriented” nudist colonies.

“I’ve never worked a sun club before,” Gandelman says, “but I figure it’ll be good exposure.”

* KFMB-radio is staging a debate this Wednesday, 4 p.m., in the Sports Arena parking lot, between Rancho Bernardo’s Evan Keliher (founder of NORM, National Organization of Real Men) and KFMB personality-resident feminist Geni Cavitt.

“There shouldn’t be any blood-letting,” Keliher says, “but one never knows.”