Bye 'Earth Momma' and hello John Tesh?

If the owners of a Yuba City commercial radio station get their way, listeners tuning in to the 101.5 FM frequency in Davis, 53 miles to the south, will rise each weekday morning to ... "Wake Up With John Tesh."

Davis being Davis, such a change probably would not go over well with the locals.

Since 2005, on low-power FM community radio station KDRT, Davisites have listened to such eclectic, locally produced radio fare as the granola-crunching "Earth Momma's Mountain Music Hour," the punk-posturing "Voice of a Generation" and political machinations on a variety of shows.

So, John Tesh, the epitome of vanilla radio?

"Oh, no comment on that," chuckles Jeff Shaw, KDRT's station manager. "But I haven't heard (Tesh's) show."

Shaw admits it's no laughing matter for those who volunteer at the noncommercial, community owned and operated station in the progressive, bicycle- loving college town.

KDRT, one of only two low-power FM stations in the Sacramento area (KDEE in Rancho Cordova is the other), soon might be forced off the air if the Federal Communications Commission approves the request by KMJE, Yuba City's adult-contemporary music station, to move its transmission tower from Gridley to Woodland. In January, KMJE's owner, Results Radio, filed an FCC application to move its "community of license" to a field between Woodland and Davis. Because KMJE's frequency is the same as KDRT's (101.5 FM), one of these stations will have to go if the application is approved.

And, in the hierarchy of the radio world, a commercial station almost always trumps a low-power station.

When Congress passed the Radio Broadcast Preservation Act of 2000, it severely limited the FCC's licensing authority for low-power stations. It said a low-power station must protect against interference with commercial stations on each side of its signal by three channels. It also said commercial stations have priority for a frequency when the FCC approves a change of community license.

Jack Fritz, president of Results Radio, says the motivation for moving the pop music station into the heart of Yolo County has nothing to do with Davis' community-radio endeavor.

"We just think this facility will serve more people than it currently does, and that would clearly be in the public interest," Fritz says. "There are a number of variables that go into the signal reach, but I can assure you the signal will be strong in Davis."

Which would mean the end of KDRT, Shaw fears.

"We hope not, but that's a real possibility," Shaw says. "The big thing that hurts us is that, this January, the FCC loosened the rules for (commercial) stations moving (antennas). It used to be a two- or three-year process. Now, it's three months."

Shaw said KDRT's board of directors is raising funds for attorneys to try to block KMJE's application and for engineers to figure out an open frequency from which KDRT could broadcast. Fritz has pledged to help KDRT find a new home on the dial. But he doesn't want to give up the 101.5 frequency.

"We're kind of like second-class citizens, but it was written into the rules at the beginning as part of a compromise (with commercial stations)," Shaw says.

In the past two years, two low-power FM stations in Washington (in Spokane and Mercer Island) have staved off encroachment by commercial stations by getting exemptions from the FCC, but that was largely because of the efforts of Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., a member of the Senate Commerce Committee, which oversees the FCC.

Shaw is hoping for similar intervention, but says, "It's just a business decision."

As a nonprofit, KDRT does not face ratings pressures. The station's mission is educational. To that end, KDRT seems to have achieved its goals. In 2005, it won an award from the city of Davis for community service.

"We do live election programming," Shaw says. "We tape concerts around town and replay them. We've had 70 (Davis) residents producing their own shows come through our doors in two years. They have John Tesh and two local DJs later in the day."

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