New radio station will be based at KPVM-TV

KPVM-TV owner Vern Van Winkle announced last week an East Coast company will begin airing a Pahrump country-western radio station beginning early next month.

KACP-FM will broadcast at 30,000 watts at 95.9 FM, Van Winkle said. The KPVM-TV news broadcasts at noon and 5 p.m. will air on the radio station, he said.

“The studios are headquartered at KPVM and it should be on the air in the month of October. We are projecting the first week and possibly even this weekend coming up for the Fall Festival,” Van Winkle said.

He said Fitzgerald Communications, the engineering company, will bring in all their own equipment, automation, antennas, microwave and other infrastructure. The company is based in Pennsylvania.

“I’m going to be their site manager for the station, I’m going to be taking all their inquiries, helping, to assist them at this point in time,” Van Winkle said.

Van Winkle said the new 30,000-watt station should reach as far north as Beatty. Eventually, Van Winkle said Fitzgerald Communications hopes to build a series of repeater stations that will provide links from Amargosa Valley to Beatty to Tonopah within the next year.

It will be the first Pahrump radio newscast, though KNYE-FM hosts local talk shows. Nationally syndicated talk show host Art Bell and his late wife, Ramona Bell, got the go-ahead from the Federal Communications Commission to open KNYE-FM in 2001, for music it features an oldies format.

KACP-FM will be the first Pahrump-based country-western station since the departure of KHWG, which began when former Channel 30 and 62 television station owner Keily Miller acquired the station from Chris Kidd, owner of South Lake Tahoe-based Eastern Sierra Broadcasting in December 2002 to settle a lawsuit. KHWG was formerly the call letters of a station in Quincy, Calif. that were retired.

The new radio station will include lots of inserts on Pahrump community happenings as well, Van Winkle said.