Brief by Central Staff
Communications – November 2000 – Colorado Central Magazine
There was a time, not much more than a dozen years ago, when FM radio in Salida, and much of Central Colorado as well, began and ended with KVRH (now 92.3 mhz, but it was 92.1 back then). In fact, we can remember when it began broadcasting in stereo, sometime around 1980.
That’s the oldest signal hereabouts. The newest will likely appear sometime soon, depending on fund-raising and the weather. It will be a translator at 89.5 for KCME, a non-commercial classical-music station in Colorado Springs.
Charles Arce, a Salida resident who has helped with fund-raising, said that area residents have raised a little more than half the $10,000 needed for the installation, and that the equipment has been ordered.
Contributions are welcome, he said, and should be sent to him at 256 Mesa Court, Salida CO 81201; the checks should be made payable to KCME-FM/Salida Buena Vista Translator Fund.
This isn’t the first time area residents have raised money for an FM translator.
It also happened in the late 1980s with fund-raising to install a translator on Mt. Princeton at 89.9 for KUNC, the public radio station at the University of Northern Colorado. (In the small-world department, note that its manager, Neil Best, is the older brother of Allen Best, a frequent contributor to this magazine).
KRCC (now 95.7), the public radio station at Colorado College in Colorado Springs, arrived in 1990 in Salida with a translator on Methodist Mountain. It was already serving Westcliffe and Gardner at 88.5.
Since then, we’ve heard KBVC at 104.1, a country station mostly programmed by satellite and owned by the same Three Eagles that now owns KVRH, and as of Sept. 1, KSBV, classic rock at 93.7.
Another translator that arrived in recent years was KWBI, a Christian station at 88.9.
KWBI was owned by Colorado Christian University in Lakewood, but on Oct. 7, it was sold to K-LOVE, a network that describes itself as “a non-profit Christian ministry broadcasting in 30 states … with contemporary Christian music and brief Bible commentaries [which] broadcasts 24 hours a day with no commercials and is supported by its listeners.”
CCU’s board decided to sell KWBI so that it could focus on its educational programs at its undergraduate campus in Lakewood, its graduate campus in Morrison, and centers in Grand Junction, Colorado Springs, Fort Collins, and the Denver Tech Center.
At this rate of addition to the FM dial, civilization must be getting awfully close.