KQV is a peculiar station.\u00a0\u00a0 It is in Pittsburgh, where I grew up.\u00a0 The Call Sign starting with a “K” in the Eastern US and only being three letters tells you that the station was a very very early pioneer station (the license was issued in 1920).<\/p>\n
History of KQV<\/a><\/p>\n Pittsburgh was and still is largely dominated by “old money” – the folks who led the industrial revolution in America, and their bankers – the names Andrew Carnegie (US Steel), Henry Frick (US Steel), Andrew Mellon (Mellon Bank, Gulf Oil), George Westinghouse (electronics, radio), John Pitcairn(PPG), Alfred Hunt (Alcoa) all became important Pittsburgh industrialists that built the America that was able to win two World Wars with our manufacturing capacity.<\/p>\n KQV is currently an “All News” radio station.\u00a0 It’s peculiar because 1)\u00a0 It’s not run by CBS\u00a0 2)\u00a0 It’s in a relatively small market with a shrinking population and economy and 3) it operates on 1410 KHz, an AM frequency without clear channel AM protection – a frequency used in most of the country for low power AM stations that only reach a few miles.\u00a0 KQV is 5 kw day\/night, which gives it good coverage during the day of the entire city, and most of the city at night.\u00a0\u00a0 The “Cume” of the station (the number of people who listened to it for at least 5 minutes once during the month) is only around 60,000 people – according to the Arbitron numbers at radio-info.com, the station is the #27th station in the #25 market.\u00a0\u00a0 It is not a viable radio station without a sugar daddy funding it.<\/p>\n KQV was an ABC radio station during the 1960s (ABC bought the station in 1957), following the same Rock format as WLS in Chicago and WABC in New York as the Beatles invaded and transformed America.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Near the end of its life as an ABC station, both Rush Limbaugh and Jim Quinn worked there playing music.<\/p>\n In 1974, ABC sold the station in part because of the national ownership caps to Taft Broadcasting of Cincinnati.\u00a0 Within a year, Taft gave up on AM music and switched the station to All News.<\/p>\n By 1982, Taft wanted to unload the station and sold it to the station manager\u00a0Robert W. Dickey who got the money from\u00a0Richard Mellon Scaif<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0 Mr Scaif oversees several endowments holding Mellon family money and has access to the money to keep the station going without regard to whether it makes money or not.<\/p>\n Mr Scaif is very active in Republican politics behind the scenes.\u00a0 He owns the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review newspaper, which you most likely heard about because of Teresa Heinz Kerry’s outburst during the Presidential campaign, telling the reporter to “Shove it”.<\/a>\u00a0 Scaif is also the primary investor behind NewsMax.<\/p>\n Robert W. Dickey died over the Christmas holidays – he had run the station for Mr Scaif since 1982 and died at the age of 85.<\/p>\n http:\/\/www.post-gazette.com\/pg\/11360\/1199357-122.stm?cmpid=news.xml<\/p>\n (I can’t find any family connection between Robert Dickey and Lew Dickey who runs Cumulus)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" KQV is a peculiar station.\u00a0\u00a0 It is in Pittsburgh, where I grew up.\u00a0 The Call Sign starting with a “K” in the Eastern US and only being three letters tells you that the station was a very very early pioneer … Continue reading