The license of one of Nebraska’s oldest radio stations has been returned to the FCC as a result of consolidation in the Scottsbluff market.
The Nebraska Rural Radio Association reached a deal to buy Legacy Communications’ six stations in the market last fall but had to divest two of them to comply with ownership caps, since it already owned two other stations in the market. It quickly sold KETT/99.3 (Mitchell-Scottsbluff) to non-commercial broadcaster VSS Catholic Communications.
However, no buyer emerged for the former KOLT/1320 (Scottsbluff). The NRRA returned its license to the FCC in a letter on Jan. 17, the dame day it formally consummated the purchase from Legacy.
KOLT’s callsign and syndicated News/Talk/Sports format were moved to the former KOAQ/690 (Terrytown-Scottsbluff) in November. 1320 was officially known as KOAQ from November until the time it was deleted.
FCC history cards show the now-deleted license dated back to 1930, when Hilliard Company Inc. signed on KGKY/1500 with 100 Watts. The station later upgraded to 250 Watts and was then moved to 1490 as part of the NARBA reallocation in the early 1940s.
The station changed its callsign to KOLT and moved to 1320 in 1947 with 1kW. It then upgraded its daytime power to 5kW two years later, a facility it continued to use for the next 70 years. Broadcasting Yearbooks from the 1950s list it as a CBS affiliate.
The station was later owned by Tracy Broadcasting, which sold it to Legacy in 2007. Armada Media operated the station, and others in the market, from 2013 to 2018 but never purchased it outright.
Here’s a 2016 ID from KOLT: