• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

Moist Memories Linger at Defunct AM Radio Station

Posted on: Monday, 6 February 2006, 12:00 CST

By Tom Lutey, The Spokesman-Review, Spokane, Wash.

Feb. 6--Every year about this time, the old radio grounds of KSVY-AM flood with several feet of water. Overnight, the 10-acre parcel on Thorpe Drive becomes a bird sanctuary, colorfully peppered with cackling mallards and Labrador-sized geese too fat to fly south for the winter. The upper reaches of the stream that floods the grounds contain some fish, and so, naturally, trout grace the station's submerged parking lot.

In the center of it all, the KSVY utility trailer sits on stilts like some misplaced Venetian single-wide. There's a rotten boat dock on Thorpe's southern edge, which once harbored the eclectic radio station's gondola.

There's a crackle in the air from the electrical lines overhead, though the utility trailer no longer pulses with KSVY's 10,000 watts. If it did, what a song it could sing.

Rising up from the muck of flooded Chester Creek, KSVY was one of only two Spokane Valley radio stations and probably the only station in the Inland Northwest located in a seasonal pond.

"The water made the signal better," said Art Mackelvie, a broadcast veteran who worked for KZUN "The Cousin," Spokane Valley's other AM radio station.

KSVY was managed by local sports radio phenom Dick Wright, a friend of Mackelvie's and the broadcasting "voice" for about every local athletic team worth listening to. KSVY's main office was on the southwest corner of Sprague Avenue and Pines Road, not in the equipment trailer at the base of its tower, built in 1981.

Copper guide wires for KSVY's 400-foot tower trailed into the flood pool, which better grounded the station. And it wasn't unheard of in the driest months of the year for KSVY to get calls from listeners on the outer reaches of its transmission who were losing its signal.

But not that many people were listening. The real story behind the station was how few people it served. KSVY was a reincarnation of 1550 KXXR-AM, a station that tried every format but hard rock and country disco, failing at them all, eventually.

The station's radio signal was powerful enough to reach north Spokane in the daytime, but at night when KXXR had to lower its signal to 2,500 watts and change its direction using a shorter tower so as not to interfere with other stations, its roar became a peep.

A creditor by the name of Harold Orr wound up owning the station and tried to shut it down because it was hemorrhaging money. Radio wasn't Orr's forte. He owned 115 H&R Block offices in Oregon and Washington, a leasing company and several other enterprises but had nothing to do with broadcasting.

The Federal Communications Commission quickly informed Orr they'd revoke KXXR's license if the station was shuttered. Orr responded by putting the business back on the air as KSVY, an intentional money loser, with no real format and few commercials, if any. With Wright's influence, KSVY's new format became opera and sports in 1990.

"We had classical music all day long," said Jerry Anderson, a former KSVY program director. "But we did a lot with Northeast B basketball and baseball games, and we had University of Idaho football. We'd have a lot of calls, and we'd have to explain that the revenue from sports supported classical music."

KSVY had an odd signal pattern. Anderson said the station would get reception complaints from listeners in the Shadle Park area and then get a letter from Sweden where low-signal radio fanatics were picking up KSVY by hooking a large radio antenna to a farmer's wire fence.

But everyone lost KSVY's signal in 1996 when teenagers broke into the utility trailer on Thorpe Drive and smashed the station's equipment. Orr didn't bother to fire the station up after the vandalism. He paid for years to light the beacon atop KSVY's towers so they wouldn't be an airplane hazard, and then he dismantled the towers last year.

And the old KSVY trailer, boarded up and packed full of smashed electronics, is all that's left.

-----

Copyright (c) 2006, The Spokesman-Review, Spokane, Wash.

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

For information on republishing this content, contact us at (800) 661-2511 (U.S.), (213) 237-4914 (worldwide), fax (213) 237-6515, or e-mail reprints@krtinfo.com.

NYSE:HRB,

Source: The Spokesman-Review

More News in this Category