Re: [HCDX]: KCJJ-1630

[Don Moore <mooredxer@xxxxxxxxx>]

KCJJ in Iowa City is a rather interesting station. The
station is about 60 miles from Davenport, where I live.  

That owner/manager Steve Bridges has a bit of a reputation
in the local radio scene. In the early 1990s, he was a
morning jock at one of the FM stations here in the
Davenport area and was involved in an incident in which a
person he was interviewing used profanity on the air.
Because Steve didn't "push the button" to cut out the
profanity (he says he didn't expect this person to do
anything like that), the FCC slapped him with what was a
record fine at that time. (They knew about it because a
rival station happened to be taping his show and sent the
FCC a tape of what happened.) 

Since then, Bridges fine has been exceeded by the infamous
Howard Stern, but his is still second on the list for FCC
fines. The last I knew (about a year or so ago), Bridges
was still refusing to pay the fine. 

The FCC, however, has the fine listed under his old on-air
name (which I can't remember) and not his legal name of
Steve Bridges. When a short time later he applied to buy
KCJJ in Iowa City, the outstanding fine never came up.
After that, when he applied for the expanded band
frequency, again, his problem with the outstanding fine
still didn't come up. When I talked to him two years ago,
he said he didn't think the FCC knew it was the same
person.

A lot of local media people think Steve got a raw deal with
the fine. Apparently the person he was interviewing had
some connections with the person at the competiting station
who provided the FCC with the tape. Some people think it
was a set-up. But, the FCC maintains the incident was his
fault.

Steve continues to be controversial, though. Until last
year, there were two local competing radio networks that
broadcast play-by-play coverage of University of Iowa
football games (each relayed by various stations around the
state). A year ago the larger one was bought out by an
out-of-state company which then offered the university a
large payoff to make give them exclusive rights. A number
of stations, including KCJJ, were frozen out. 

However, all but one U of Iowa football games were
televised, at least locally. No one else except the
approved network could legally do radio from the stadium,
so Steve decided to put together his own second network
doing play-by-play announcing by watching the televsion
monitor in a local bar. His version actually got better
local ratings than the big network did. They took him to
court, but he won the first round. Last I knew it was being
appealed. 

Anyway, KCJJ is a station with a lot of interesting stories
behind it.

Don Moore    mooredxer@xxxxxxxxx
===
Don Moore     mooredxer@xxxxxxxxx
Radio: http://www.swl.net/patepluma   
Family History: http://members.xoom.com/patepluma
General: http://members.tripod.com/donmoore
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