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- Subscribe - Contact Us - Rate Card - Place an Ad Archives Revels Classifieds Real Estate Menu Guide Wedding Weather Subscribe Contact Us August 6, 2005 JPR and Christian radio station KDOV ... TOGETHER AGAIN By Mike Green Ashland Daily Tidings The Jefferson Public Radio broadcast tower has grown and now assists in the deliverance of an evangelical message across the Rogue Valley. KDOV’s translator sits atop the Jefferson Public Radio tower north of Ashland. Orville Hector | Ashland Daily Tidings In April, Christian radio station KDOV began broadcasting on FM 107.9 in Ashland after JPR Executive Director Ron Kramer gave permission to use its tower as a base for installing two antennas that would augment the voice of evangelism in the areas of Ashland, Talent and Phoenix. Mounted atop JPR’s 300-foot radio tower just northwest of Exit 19 are two translators — one vertical, the other horizontal — that provide amplification of the signal transmitted from the Grants Pass headquarters of KDOV, a fast-growing, highly successful Christian radio station that was born in Ashland in 1960. While local talk host Jeff Golden and Washington, D.C.-based Diane Rheem are familiar names to listeners of JPR, what fans don’t know about their public radio station, which broadcasts from the campus of Southern Oregon University, is that the programming heard on its news and information service is due to a significant donation by Perry Atkinson, the president and owner of KDOV. Kramer believes that JPR is “clearly” indebted to KDOV. “Perry Atkinson’s donation of the AM station KSJK was a very generous one that made a huge impact enabling us to create the news and information service,” Kramer said. “And in some fashion it stimulated a subsequent donation because Bill Smullin (father of current KOBI Channel 5 president Patricia Smullin) gave us KAGI-AM, their radio station in Grants Pass, which became the second station in our news and information service. If Perry hadn’t essentially started things off with that donation, I don’t know that the other donation would have followed. It was the donation of those two stations that was the core in building the service.” From gospel to newstalk The frequency AM 1230, which JPR currently uses to broadcast its news and information service to the Ashland-Medford region, originated 45 years ago as a 1,000-watt daytime-only Christian broadcast in an upstairs room of Ashland’s Faith Tabernacle, headed by pastor Leo Wine. The call letters were KRBC until Wine acquired the coveted KDOV moniker in the mid-’70s. In 1983, Atkinson and his family moved to Ashland, purchased the station and soon after, moved the tower to its present location. “We made it 1,000 watts day and night,” Atkinson said. “In 1989 we acquired frequency 1300 and moved the station.” That move was to Grants Pass. Along with the transition came greater signal strength, up to 20,000 watts by day and 5,000 by night. But something had to be done with the old Ashland station. The gift Atkinson decided to give SOU its first AM station, KSJK. The donation opened another forum through which JPR could deviate from the classical/jazz music programming that most NPR affiliates were broadcasting on FM frequencies, and offer a more unique interactive service to the public in the form of AM talk radio. “I think at the time the estimated value of the donation was $125,000,” Kramer said. “Today that station on the market would be worth closer to a million. At that time we had only one service (music-news format on FM) and we faced an opportunity to craft another service, so it was a very substantial donation.” JPR’s “news and information service” would become the original mold from which the current AM broadcasts would be carved. But the metamorphosis of the programming heard today would take some time. “The news and information service as it is now has had quite a number of refinements since 1989,” Kramer said. New beginnings Both stations have grown significantly since KDOV set the foundation for the local success of JPR’s AM format. Today, KDOV can be heard throughout the valley on 91.7 FM, its flagship station. Aside from the additional frequency at 107.9 in Ashland, KDOV has expanded to 88.1 in Grants Pass, 106.5 in Cave Junction, 92.1 in both Central Point and Eagle Point, 92.3 in Azalea and 106.5 in Yreka. Atkinson says the station has applications pending for broadcasts in Klamath Falls and Bend, while he is diligently working on Canyonville, Roseburg, Cottage Grove and Florence. He says he doesn’t know why the station has grown so rapidly despite the fact that other Christian broadcasts exist. But he offers some insight from the result of surveys conducted of radio audiences. “Recent research shows that post-9/11, 32 percent of listeners to Christian radio stations are nonbelievers,” Atkinson said. “Why? Well, they have two common answers: looking for hope and a different world view.” That different perspective is a “biblical world view,” according to Atkinson. Programming choices range from news and information, similar to the JPR format, in addition to biblical teaching by some of the nation’s most well-known evangelists and scholarly theologians, to a variety of Christian-gospel music. KDOV, which boasts radio call letters that Atkinson says evokes images of the dove of peace that landed on the shoulder of Jesus after his baptism, hopes to spread a message of evangelism to all of Oregon and into Washington. “God opened a door and we’re in growth mode,” Atkinson said of his listener-supported station. “We go where God wants us to go.” DailyTidings.com Home Page Archives | Revels | Classifieds | Real Estate Guide | Weather | Subscribe | Contact Us Copyright 2005 Ashland Daily Tidings and Ottaway Newspapers All Rights Reserved Deep Muscle Stimulator Ceramic Piggy Banks FREE Entertainment Guide Women's & Men's Slippers Accelerate Weightloss Products Backpacks Generic Viagra Vegas Travel Guide Search Engine Optimization Sportsbook Absinthe Supply Student Loans Hotel & Airline Reservations African Safari Hammocks Helzberg Diamonds Online Casinos Community Bonus Casino King of Spirits ink cartridges Mortgage Calculator Security Systems Mailing Lists Click Here Advertisement .:Advertisements:. 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