• My Account
  • Your Profile
  • Member Archives
Saturday, June 21, 2025
Cart / $0.00

No products in the cart.

Fybush.com
  • Home
  • Archives
  • Subscribe
  • My Account
  • Store
    • Cart
    • Checkout
  • About/Contact
    • Scott Fybush
    • Copyright Information
    • Privacy Policy
  • Fybush Media
  • Links
No Result
View All Result
Fybush.com
  • Home
  • Archives
  • Subscribe
  • My Account
  • Store
    • Cart
    • Checkout
  • About/Contact
    • Scott Fybush
    • Copyright Information
    • Privacy Policy
  • Fybush Media
  • Links

No products in the cart.

No Result
View All Result
Fybush.com
No Result
View All Result

Site of the Week 1/20/12: Ridgecrest and the Antelope Valley, California

Scott Fybush by Scott Fybush
October 2, 2014
in California, Free Content, Tower Site of the Week
2

From time to time in this space, we’ve touched on some of the signals in California’s Antelope Valley, the big swath of exurban sprawl that spreads out along state routes 14 and 138 in the desert some 50 miles north of Los Angeles. It’s one of those areas that we tend to pass through en route to someplace more interesting, and so it’s never gotten proper treatment here on Site of the Week…and, alas, this week’s installment won’t do it much more justice than the last time around, when we saw some of the Antelope Valley AM sites on the way south from Bakersfield.

This time, our pictures come from an April 2010 visit, wherein we found ourselves heading north on 14 to the Owens Valley, site of last week’s installment. Along the way, we realized that while we’d seen some AM towers in the valley, we’d never driven by the studios, and it seemed worth a short detour to fix that omission.

Clear Channel Antelope Valley

High Desert Broadcasting in Palmdale

There are two big clusters that dominate this somewhat over-radioed market: Clear Channel has five signals coming from an office park on Avenue K-4 (they’re really, really unimaginative with their street names in the valley!) on the south side of Lancaster – top-40 KVVS (105.5 Rosamond) and rocker KSRY (103.1 Tehachapi) simulcast Clear Channel LA outlets KIIS and KYSR, KAVL (610 Lancaster) does sports, KTPI-FM (97.7 Mojave) does country and KTPI (1340 Mojave) does standards. This cluster is being dismantled, though; in December, Clear Channel announced it’s selling KAVL, KTPI and KTPI-FM to new owners, leaving only the two LA simulcasts. (We’re still in Los Angeles County here, believe it or not, and thus still in the LA radio market.)

High Desert Broadcasting has the other cluster here, operating from studios on 6th Street East and Avenue Q-9 near what passes for the center of Palmdale, south of Lancaster. This group includes two AMs – talker KOSS (1380 Lancaster) and regional Mexican KUTY (1470 Palmdale) – and five FMs, classic rock KQAV (93.5 Rosamond), regional Mexican KCEL (96.1 Mojave), modern rock “Edge” KKZQ (100.1 Mojave), AC “K-Mix” KGMX (106.3 Lancaster) and classic hits KMVE (106.9 California City).

KLOA 1240

KSSI 102.7

KZIQ 92.7/KWDJ 1360

From the Antelope Valley, 14 (the old US 6) heads north into the eastern Sierra region, meeting up with US 395 about an hour north of Mojave at the town of Inyokern, and it’s there that we turn eastward just a bit to check out the radio scene in Ridgecrest, the commercial center at the southern end of the eastern Sierra and the northern gateway to Death Valley.

The KWDJ/KZIQ studios

Ridgecrest is a military town, closely tied to the adjoining China Lake Naval Air Weapons Station, and it’s far enough away from everything, even the Antelope Valley, to have a fairly extensive radio landscape of its own.

There were two AM stations here at the beginning – KLOA (1240) in 1956, followed in 1974 by daytimer KZIQ (1360).

Both signals still exist as part of larger clusters in town. KLOA’s 1240 signal comes from an antenna right next to the studio building on Balsam Street just north of downtown, where it’s part of the Adelman Broadcasting cluster that also includes rhythmic top 40 “Heat” KRAJ (100.9 Johannesburg), adult hits “Bob” KGBB (103.9 Edwards), regional Mexican KEPD (104.9 Ridgecrest, the erstwhile KLOA-FM) and a “Franken-FM,” K06OL Inyokern, which runs country as “Kickin’ Country 87.7.”

Right in the center of town on Ridgecrest Boulevard, we find out what’s become of KZIQ: those calls are now on 92.7 FM, which was doing country as “The Coyote” in 2010 but is now hot AC. The AM signal on 1360 is now KWDJ, a talker, and both KWDJ and KZIQ come from a tower site behind an apartment complex over on the east side of town, off Ridgecrest Boulevard south of the naval air station. (The AM now has 31 watts of night power in addition to the kilowatt of daytime power it’s been running since its 1974 debut.)

Also adjacent to the air station, but at the north end of town, is a more recent standalone FM startup. KSSI (102.7 China Lake) has its studio and transmitter on Inyokern Boulevard, where it’s been doing rock as “I-Rock” since the mid-1990s.

There are also relays here for Family Radio (KFRJ 91.1 China Lake), EMF’s “K-Love” (KZLU 88.5 Ridgecrest) and “Air 1” (KGBM 89.7 Randsburg, a recent long-distance move from Redding up in northern California) and Living Proof’s Bishop-based KWTW network (KWTD 91.9 Ridgecrest). Those signals all transmit from El Paso Peak south of Ridgecrest. That site is also home to the KRAJ and KEPD transmitters, and we’ll have to come by and see it again another time, since we didn’t make it on this trip.

Don’t miss your chance to order the all-new Tower Site Calendar 2012, available now from the all new Fybush.com store!

And check out our sister site, Tophour.com, beginning Wednesday, January 25, for Ridgecrest legal IDs…

Next week: Santa Clarita Valley, California

Share this:

  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) LinkedIn
  • Click to share on X (Opens in new window) X
  • Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window) Pocket
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email
  • Click to print (Opens in new window) Print
  • More
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Facebook
Previous Post

NERW 1/16/2012: Who’ll Replace CKLN at 88.1 in Toronto?

Next Post

NERW 1/23/2012: Cumulus Doubles Down on PA Country

Scott Fybush

Scott Fybush

Editor/Publisher, NorthEast Radio Watch and Tower Site of the Week

Related Posts

NorthEast Radio Watch 6/16/2025: Townsquare, Corus Cut Deeper
Free Content

NorthEast Radio Watch 6/16/2025: Townsquare, Corus Cut Deeper

In this week’s issue… Oneonta signals go dark - Whiteoaks takes over in Niagara - Corus empties Ottawa studios - CBS-FM shuffles talent - Armstrong anniversary to be honored

by Scott Fybush
June 16, 2025
NorthEast Radio Watch 6/9/2025: Urgency Grows for Public Media
Free Content

NorthEast Radio Watch 6/9/2025: Urgency Grows for Public Media

In this week’s issue… Public broadcasters plead for help - Connoisseur restructures leadership - Pennsylvania AM goes dark - Succession plan for veteran college radio manager

by Scott Fybush
June 9, 2025
NorthEast Radio Watch 6/2/2025: A WOW Moment for WATR
Free Content

NorthEast Radio Watch 6/2/2025: A WOW Moment for WATR

In this week’s issue… Car dealership goes terrestrial - Lawsuit uncovers Connoisseur's attempted bids for Audacy, Cox - New newsroom for WNBC, WNJU - Remembering Buffalo's Deeb, Batavia's Platt

by Scott Fybush
June 4, 2025
Top of the Tower Podcast #064: Talking Canada with Broadcast Dialogue’s Connie Thiessen
Free Content

Top of the Tower Podcast #064: Talking Canada with Broadcast Dialogue’s Connie Thiessen

In this week's episode - It was a longer hiatus than we intended, but Top of the Tower is back with a new spring season of conversations with some of the most interesting people in radio. This week, we move north...

by Scott Fybush
May 28, 2025
Next Post
NERW 1/23/2012: Cumulus Doubles Down on PA Country

NERW 1/23/2012: Cumulus Doubles Down on PA Country

Please login to join discussion

Log In

Join Now | Lost Password?

Get Fybush.com Updates

Get Fybush.com updates emailed directly to your inbox!

© 2025 JNews - Premium WordPress news & magazine theme by Jegtheme.

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Archives
  • Subscribe
  • My Account
  • Store
    • Cart
    • Checkout
  • About/Contact
    • Scott Fybush
    • Copyright Information
    • Privacy Policy
  • Fybush Media
  • Links

© 2025 JNews - Premium WordPress news & magazine theme by Jegtheme.

 

Loading Comments...
 

You must be logged in to post a comment.