KBRD (originally KTBI) has begun simulcasting its Tacoma beautiful music FM station (originally KTWR) with KTAC. Combined studios have been established in the Metropolitan Federal Park Building here in Seattle that also houses Seattle’s KMGI-FM and is located across the street from Tacoma’s old KTNT-FM, now called KBSG-FM. All of the KBRD air personalities including the program and news director broadcast from Seattle. Only two sales people will stay in Tacoma. Eight people were fired.
Michael Donovan, manager of the two Tacoma stations, was quoted as saying that both stations will continue to serve the community needs of the Tacoma-Pierce County area. Frankly, what else could he say to a reporter when the FCC requires stations to provide programming which is responsive to the ascertained issues of their community of license.
What allows KTAC to move its on air operation to Seattle is a somewhat recent change in the FCC rules that permits an AM station to locate their main studio anywhere within the station’s 5 mV/m coverage contour. While KTAC has a highly directional pattern to protect a Canadian station at the border, they evidently must squeak out a 5 mV/m contour that encompasses their new Seattle studio location. (This assumes they even care about being “legal”).
A similar recent rule for FM stations allows them to move their main studios out of their licensed community to any location within their 1 mV/m contour.
Unfortunately, the move of KTAC and KBRD to Seattle is only another example of a long history of media losses for Tacoma.
KVI opened a Seattle studio in its early days and after the war (the big one won by Chuck Morris) Vernice Irwin was granted FCC permission to re-license KVI from Tacoma to Seattle. News reports of the day indicated that the station would maintain their Tacoma Rust Building studios. In fact, they were closed and only a small studio remained in Tacoma’s Winthrop Hotel. Soon, that disappeared and KVI could not be found at all in Tacoma.
The KVI move to Seattle is especially interesting because the only reason the station was allowed to go full time on 570 was because it WAS a Tacoma station and The All American City had far less stations than did Seattle in the early 30’s.
KTNT RADIO & TVThe other major media losses from Tacoma were the networks.
CBS Radio was “stolen” from long time Tacoma affiliate KVI by KIRO. Mutual left KMO for KVI (once they had moved to Seattle) after the war although many years later KTNT did get Mutual after Autry purchased KVI and dropped the network. Tacoma lost both major television networks. KMO lost NBC to KOMO and KTNT lost CBS to KIRO, but only after a court case that cost CBS a substantial out of court settlement and provided funds to build a new newspaper plant for the Tribune, according to long time KTNT manager, Max Bice.
In more recent years, KTNT AM was stolen from Tacoma in a clever maneuver which involved the FCC and the local bankruptcy court over the objections of local citizens and public officials in Tacoma. The Save Our Station Committee (SOS) told the FCC that if they allowed KTNT AM 1400 to be taken away from Tacoma and moved to the Bremerton area, it would spell the death of truly local, responsive radio programming for Tacoma. How correct they were. KTNT was the only Tacoma station that did not provide enough coverage of Seattle to ever be able to serve other than Tacoma.
Seeing this trend and how promoters and government deregulation has left the third largest city with only one “local” radio station (KMO), and the majority of its programs originate not in Tacoma but are beamed in via satellite, local citizens are outraged.
A recent letter to the editor of TNT by retired broadcaster Dick Weeks exemplifies the concern of local Tacoma citizens. Part of that concern is that no one is providing emergency radio information for Tacoma much less any important degree of news. Weeks pointed out that during the December ’90 freezing weather when the power went out, he searched without success for a report on street conditions in Tacoma and Pierce County and for news when power would be restored. Nothing. Seattle stations occasionally broadcast a Tacoma story, but none of the daily local news that is so important to the lives of us who live here, Weeks said.
Tom Read, the founder of KBRD/KTWR, told a Trib reporter that if he had intended it to be a Seattle station he would have applied for it as a Seattle station. My goal was always to build an FM station that would serve the entire Puget Sound from Tacoma so as to promote activities and talent in Tacoma to all listeners in Western Washington. There is nothing wrong with Seattle stations sharing the news of Seattle events with Tacoma but the opposite should also be true, Read stated.
As the one who set the standard for all future members of the Board of the National Association of Broadcasters from Washington State, Tom Read was active on the FCC-Industry Advisory Committee On Radio Broadcasting during the deregulation era of the 80’s. We tried to tell the Commission what would happen to cities like Tacoma if the FCC allowed stations to move their main studios out of their immediate city of license, Read recalled. But the Reagan Commission took the position that radio was a private business and they should be allowed to make any business judgement they wished. Obviously, mistakes were made, Read said.
The only good news on the horizon for Tacoma is the fact that NPB’er Clay Huntington has received permission to build, in effect a new station in Tacoma on 1180. The downside is that the facility is licensed to the suburb of Lakewood and the night directional pattern does not push in the direction of Tacoma from its Parkland transmitter site.
To add injury to insult, the owners responsible for stealing KTNT from Tacoma and moving it to the Bremerton area have now asked the FCC to approve the sale of the station. When the owners asked Commission permission to buy and move the facility from Tacoma they declared it was for the purpose of providing service to the Bremerton area. They borrowed a page from KVI’s 1930’s maneuver and pleaded that the Bremerton area had only one station and Tacoma technically had six, including KTNT which they wanted. Just try to find even five radio stations IN OR AIRING LOCAL TACOMA INTEREST SPORTS AND PROGRAMMING. THEY ARE THERE ON PAPER ONLY, thanks to the courts and our friends in Washington.
Now, rather than being allowed to now sell the Bremerton/Silverdale area station, the owners should return it to Tacoma since they found Bremerton really didn’t want it at all. The entire fiasco turned out to be a loss, loss situation. Tacoma lost an important LOCAL station, KBRO, the longtime local service to the Bremerton area (went on the air in the late 40’s after KTBI vacated 1490 and has been an exemplarily local service station for the Bremerton area through the years) lost revenue with the advent of a second station in such a small area and was recently sold out of bankruptcy for a fraction of the prior 1 million plus sales price. And the owners who stole KTNT from Tacoma must have lost money. They are requesting permission to sell the station for $200,000.00 according to media reports after purchasing it for a sum in excess of $400,000.00 plus the costs of moving and establishing the station just outside of Bremerton near Silverdale.
Both Bremerton and Tacoma have suffered greatly because the FCC of the 80’s would not listen to the pleas of the people of Tacoma. It makes you wonder who the government is looking out for? History has proved SOS correct. Tacoma, Washington; the third largest city in the State of Washington is now a 10th rate media city with only one station operating from its confines. Whatever happened to 307B of the Communications Act and the promise to provide local cities with local media?
■ BULLITT ARTICLE CORRECTED BY NPB
Hal Willard reported recently that the TNT ran a story on KING about Channel 5 airing “infomercials”, otherwise known in the trade as program length commercials.
The article stated incorrectly that Mrs. Bullitt “put the Northwest’s first television station on the air in 1948”. NPB sent the author of the article a fax pointing out the error and concern that incorrect details of historical fact, if gone uncorrected, can some day be the basis of some researchers incorrect information because they relied on an article which contained errors. In short, NPB is always concerned about the problem of perpetuating errors of fact in the history of broadcasting.
A good example of an often repeated tale of broadcasting which according to our source is not true is the following. Jean Paul King, a network announcer from Tacoma, was reportedly the one who ended a kidshow on the air with a comment not intended for the air. Something about “that should hold the little bas——“. Jean Paul’s sister, Kitty King, told NPB recently at a meeting in Palm Springs that her famous brother was NOT the announcer. Maybe it happened, but the announcer was not Jean Paul King. But I bet we have run across that story at least ten times and it always credited the announcer as being Jean Paul King.
However, it was interesting that the TNT reporter replied by thanking NPB for the historical documentation, but did not agree that a correction was necessary since the story was basically about KING starting to run program length commercials and not on Mrs. Bullitt. Further, they said a good historian should never base their work on only one source. Let’s hope then that anyone finding the TNT article on KING also has this NPB Newsletter in their hands and thereby knows the truth, Dorothy purchased KRSC-TV, Channel 5.
The view from KTBI
June 10, 2025 at QZVX
Jason Remington says:
The studios of KTBI pictured here, overlooked Nalley Valley and a stretch of South Tacoma Way. A mainly industrial area, the Northern Pacific shops to the southwest (train cars were repaired and dismantled there), and Major Bowes’ little town of Fircrest just down the road.
That KTBI site today...
June 10, 2025 at QZVX
Jason Remington says:
Where KTBI was situated, along Center Street…
June 11, 2025 at QZVX
T.K. says:
The KTNT/KPMA transmitter was about a block west of there in the late ’70s and early ’80s (where the Pacific Cataract and Laser clinic is now).
As was Cable TV Puget Sound...
June 11, 2025 at QZVX
Jason Remington says:
The TNT media had major footprints in Tacoma. Now, all gone.