Voice of the Island : Communications: Santa Catalina is getting its first radio station in decades. The format will be music and news.

Entrepreneurs Nancy Sullivan-Geforos and Lewis Shear have a Christmas gift for Santa Catalina Island: a new radio station located in Avalon that will begin broadcasting at midnight tonight.

“Merry Christmas, Catalina,” will be the first words aired on KRCI-FM (92.7), the resort island’s first commercial radio station in three decades.

It will broadcast music and local news 24 hours a day at 3,000 watts--enough to cover the island and reach listeners from Redondo Beach to Dana Point as well.

“I’m going to try several different things with the format . . . but the music will definitely include ’26 Miles,’ ” said Sullivan-Geforos, a reference to the 1958 hit that informed the world how far “across the sea, Santa Catalina is awaitin’ for me.”

Sullivan-Geforos, 38, and Shear, 49, have spent a decade trying to establish a station on the island, which has long depended on mainland radio and television broadcasts that seldom air information about local events.

KRCI’s most important function will be to spotlight and promote Catalina, said Sullivan-Geforos, who has been dividing her time between an apartment in Avalon and her San Pedro home, where her husband and three children live.

“I want to be able to tell people to take time out,” Sullivan-Geforos said. “Catalina brings people back to nature.”

Wayne Griffin, executive director of the Catalina Island Chamber of Commerce andVisitors’ Bureau, agreed that the station could be an excellent promotional tool for the island, which depends on tourism.

Community members hope to get another FM station on the island soon, KISL (88.7), which would be a public broadcasting station. Catalina Community Broadcasting, the nonprofit organization that hopes to get “K-Isle” on the air by next summer, has raised about half of the $100,000 needed to build the studio and transmitters.

KISL backers hope to set up a studio in the famed Casino Ballroom and provide a big-band/jazz format, as well as golf cart traffic reports--for locals who putter around in the carts rather than automobiles.

Sullivan-Geforos and Shear began their quest for a commercial station in 1983 after learning that the Federal Communications Commission had expanded the number of radio frequencies available nationwide.

Sullivan-Geforos was taking broadcasting classes in Hollywood and had a year of experience at a Palm Springs station.

Noting the lack of a Catalina-based station, she was encouraged by Shear, a longtime friend and San Pedro-based businessman who owns a fitness center on Catalina, to seek a station for Avalon, the only city on the island of 3,000.

“Of all the people I’d ask for advice, (Shear) was the only one who told me, ‘What have you got to lose?’ ” Sullivan-Geforos said.

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The only commercial radio station ever located on Catalina was an AM station that broadcast big-band music during the 1950s to 1960s, according to the Catalina Island Museum. The station’s transmitter remained on the island and is now used by KBRT-AM, a Costa Mesa-based Christian station.

Sullivan-Geforos and Shear submitted a several-inches-thick application to the FCC and endured a thorough background check, a series of public hearings and competition from others to get their license to operate on the island.

All in all, Shear said, KRCI has cost about $1 million of the partners’ savings to get on the air.

During the day, two disc jockeys will play a range of music, including big-band and 1970s rock, and will provide live news reports on everything from marine conditions to community events.

At night, the station will play prerecorded adult contemporary music from the ABC satellite music network. The station will also serve as a communication source for island residents in an emergency, Sullivan-Geforos said, noting, “I have to take care of Avalon.”