WSTV gone for good
December 11, 2012It should come as little or no surprise to most that Keymarket Licenses, LLC has chosen to turn in the license for WSTV-AM (1340) in Steubenville, Ohio. The station went dark last December following a property dispute with the current owners of the land on which the towers sit. The land is adjacent to the studios and transmitter site for WTOV-TV (9) and WOGH-FM (103.5), both of which carried the WSTV calls at one time.
In a letter to the Commission dated November 19, it states: “WSTV has been off the air and silent since December 4, 2011 and currently has silent authority under BLSTA-20111213ACE. The station will not return to the air in the future.”
This is not the first license Keymarket has turned in this year. Ironically they turned in the license for WBGI-AM (also 1340) Connellsville and WASP-AM (1130) Brownsville.
Did they turn in the license for WFGI-AM (940) Charleroi? I haven’t heard it on the air in a while…
Not yet. But stay tuned for April, 2013.
What’s happening in April, 2013? Will the license expire? I wonder why they are keeping the license for AM 940. It still has the awesome original 1940’s era 1,000 Watt vacuum tube transmitter. Wonder what’ll happen to that and the solid-state 25 Watt nighttime transmitter.
The station went off the air in April 2012 and a letter was filed with the commission to maintain silence. When you have maintained silence for a year, you typically have to turn in the license unless you come forth and surrender it. From the looks of things, this is following the same pattern. To be fair, one of the main reasons this seems to be happening is that the facilities have some major technical problems and are likely cost-prohibitive to maintain. It’s also likely that it is more profitable to let the license lapse than to put the station up for sale. Some of that is conjecture on my part, but it seems logical.
its a shame.why can’t someone buy that station?i heard they didn’t want to pay the taxes on the land.
Someone could have bought the station, sure. But they would likely have had to move the transmitter from Altamont Hill among other reasons. There was a dispute over land taxes, but if I recall it was never made 100% clear what exactly was wrong.