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City of Grand Haven evicts WGHN-FM from tower due to lease violations

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since16
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Re: City of Grand Haven evicts WGHN-FM from tower due to lease violations

Post by since16 » Mon Nov 21, 2022 6:36 pm

I was reading the WZZM 13 article and it says... "The city of Grand Haven entered into a tower lease agreement with the city of Grand Haven back in 1984 and says the agreement has been revised a number of times." am I just tired or is there something wrong with that headline and sentence in that article?



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Re: City of Grand Haven evicts WGHN-FM from tower due to lease violations

Post by MWmetalhead » Mon Nov 21, 2022 7:12 pm

As to the local yokel/chamber of commerce/government officials picking formats, I can't imagine Chuck Hedstrom, Ross Biederman, Frazier Reams, Bob Liggett or even Rod Krol "asking permission" to change formats on any station they owned. That's preposterous. Signing a lease with that in it could call into question who's truly in control of the station.
The lease simply required a certain percentage of programming to originate from the WGHN studios. True, even *that* language seems unusual, but then again, how many commercial FM radio stations lease tower space from local cities? I suspect very few.

I suspect the extent of local programming is secondary if not tertiary to the other issues that the city claims to be problematic.
From all that's been revealed here, they probably had no choice but to sell WMPA, to raise cash.
I'm inclined to agree.



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Re: City of Grand Haven evicts WGHN-FM from tower due to lease violations

Post by MWmetalhead » Mon Nov 21, 2022 7:33 pm

September 21-WGHN was issued notice of 60 days to remove communication equipment from the tower. November 21 was identified as the deadline to remove equipment
Source: document posted at wzzm13.com

What's amazing to me is WGHN waited until November 18 to file the app to move to the Crown Castle site east of Spring Lake. Shouldn't they have filed that sooner?



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Re: City of Grand Haven evicts WGHN-FM from tower due to lease violations

Post by Ben Zonia » Mon Nov 21, 2022 7:40 pm

Who owned the tower on Pine Tree Road in Lansing that now has three of the Townsquare FM antennas? Didn't the station best known by the legacy call letters WILS-FM get kicked off the tower when they adopted a Country format in competition with WITL-FM? Foolish move by the owners of legacy WILS-FM though.


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Re: City of Grand Haven evicts WGHN-FM from tower due to lease violations

Post by Thunderstorm » Mon Nov 21, 2022 7:43 pm

The violation of not providing local programming of WMPA 93.1
The format was country switched to classic rock.
12 pm-1 pm Monday thru Friday, you had the Classic Rock Cafe hosted by Jesse Bruce.
3 pm-7 pm Monday thru Friday, you had Jesse in the Basement, hosted by Jesse Bruce>
There were lots of commercials that aired that were local.
Also. local high school football and basketball games were aired.

There are quite a lot of people that are not happy with the direction that the city of Grand Haven is going.
It is losing it's small town charm, seem to want condos and high end apartments in the downtown area
and catering to lure more visitors and future residents to the area.



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Re: City of Grand Haven evicts WGHN-FM from tower due to lease violations

Post by TC Talks » Tue Nov 22, 2022 7:29 am

Grand Haven is the most undervalued real estate along the coast at this point. It should be second homes of people from Chicago by now.


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Re: City of Grand Haven evicts WGHN-FM from tower due to lease violations

Post by MWmetalhead » Tue Nov 22, 2022 7:46 am

Out of curiosity, is WGHN-FM restricted to 3 kW / 100 meters equivalent?

Very few if any decent towers within city grade range of Grand Haven for a Class A. The one near Spring Lake high school might be the best option.

There is one in Crockery Twp (Nunica) that is about 420 feet in height and owned by Vertical Bridge. I am unsure if that's close enough to support city grade service to Grand Haven, though. That site also probably isn't spaced sufficiently to the station at 92.5 MHz that is licensed to Newaygo.

https://wireless2.fcc.gov/UlsApp/AsrSea ... chType=TRL



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Re: City of Grand Haven evicts WGHN-FM from tower due to lease violations

Post by EdWalker » Tue Nov 22, 2022 8:36 am

The proposed tower is owned not by Crown Castle, but by a company called KC Properties out of Muskegon.

https://fccdata.org/?lang=en&qmenu=2&tt ... n=-86.1422

From all that I've seen, it appears WGHN-FM is a full A that can have 6kw up to 100 meters HAAT.



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Re: City of Grand Haven evicts WGHN-FM from tower due to lease violations

Post by MWmetalhead » Tue Nov 22, 2022 8:52 am

You are indeed correct:

https://www.fccinfo.com/CMDProEngine.ph ... a0babd2735

I either misread the data or entered the wrong ID number when I searched yesterday.



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Re: City of Grand Haven evicts WGHN-FM from tower due to lease violations

Post by Ben Zonia » Tue Nov 22, 2022 1:25 pm

Researching WGHN-FM and WZUU, it would appear that WGHN-FM was restricted as a 3 kW Class A by WZUU 92.3 Allegan. When WZUU 92.3 Allegan moved to WZUU 92.5 Mattawan, WGHN-FM became far enough spaced from WZUU to be a 6 kW nondirectional Class A. This is difficult to follow because of call letter changes.

First Adjacent Class A to Class A spacing increased from about 40 miles to about 45 miles when Class As went from 3 kW to 6 kW.


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Re: City of Grand Haven evicts WGHN-FM from tower due to lease violations

Post by andymuskegon » Tue Nov 22, 2022 4:29 pm

laugh all you like, but the reality is that it's another nail in the coffin for small market local media, grand haven is literally in a tail spin with dumb ass ideas which i have seen destroy more than one incredible thing over the last year and probably added to the death of a local concert promoter. it's all fine my me. we'll gladly take the tourism just north. just shooting yourselves in the foot grand haven


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Re: City of Grand Haven evicts WGHN-FM from tower due to lease violations

Post by Robert Faygo » Wed Nov 23, 2022 4:15 pm

Image

Thanks for the link Jeff! That certainly sheds a ton of light on things that neither side seemed to wanted to reveal. Neither party is acting in good faith.

I don't know enough about radio transmitting to understand how 93.1 could have gone on the air without some kind of modification to what had been on the tower when it was just 92.1 operating from there.

The whole pissing match about the 75% local sure seems like something that the city and radio station would have clearly worked out before 93.1 ever signed on.

I don't blame the city one bit for pulling the plug after WGHN stopped paying to rectify the whole electric bill fiasco.


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Re: City of Grand Haven evicts WGHN-FM from tower due to lease violations

Post by A1B1C1D1 » Wed Nov 23, 2022 10:16 pm

Tough situation for WGHN. The city technically doesn't have to wait eight years for WGHN to pay their electric bill despite the cities fault of undercharging them for eight years or possibly even longer. Very much being an armchair observer in posting that their best bet would be to come up with $100k and suck up the $4k a month for both signals. The electric bill isn't going away regardless and you won't save much moving to a new tower UNLESS they want $4k for each antenna which would be incredibly aggressive rent. No city wants a new tower going up unless maybe its in the middle of an industrial park.

Tough situation as WGHN still has a local payroll and probably less revenue now. Not a joy moving signals at the begining of winter but it can be done at a cost. Sometimes crudely done with follow up work in the warmer weather adding to said cost.



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Re: City of Grand Haven evicts WGHN-FM from tower due to lease violations

Post by MWmetalhead » Thu Nov 24, 2022 7:14 am

How the heck did WGHN not know the publicly owned utility company was sending them the wrong power bill for years on end? They know the rate per kW/h, right? They know the TPO, right? They should've been able to figure out very easily that they were being undercharged.

I guess I'm skeptical of WGHN's plea of being a victim.

The station's refutation of the city's claim that it has been subsidizing WGHN is silly, too. If the city is telling the truth regarding the utility bill situation, it clearly has been providing the station an unintended cash benefit by paying a very significant portion of its power bill.

Did WGHN have a legally binding agreement with the city in writing regarding the $1,000 per month installment arrangement toward paying down the utility arrearage? The station claims a Memorandum of Understanding was signed. It then goes on to say the MoU is unrelated to the lease but the station decided to discontinue making payments when the city claimed the radio station was in violation of the tower lease. Here's the thing - the term "MoU" is generally used to describe a non-binding outline of terms. It generally is not used to describe a legally enforceable agreement, such as a promissory note.

Were the $1,000 monthly payments discontinued because the city made demand for the full outstanding amount? If so, did the city have the right to make such payment demand? Those answers are unclear because the relevant documents have not been shared with the public.

Finally, the statement is not fully transparent regarding WMPA. Yes, WGHN, Inc. still owns it. Yes, LMAs are not uncommon. However, the fact is - a purchase and sale agreement is in place, the closing of which is subject to certain conditions precedent being satisfied (one of which is FCC approval). I suspect WGHN, Inc. would love for that divestiture to occur sooner rather than later.



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