KWVE-FM

KWVE-FM

File:KWAVE Los Angeles.png
San Clemente, California
Broadcast area	San Diego, California Greater Los Angeles Inland Empire, California
Frequency	107.9 (MHz) (HD Radio)
Branding	K-Wave
Programming
Format	Christian talk and music
Ownership
Owner	Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa
Sister stations	KWVE (AM), KSDW, KWTH
History
First air date	1971
Call sign meaning	K WaVE (station's moniker)
Technical information
Facility ID	8410
Class	B
ERP	530 watts
HAAT	1,156 meters
Transmitter coordinates	33°42′40.00″N 117°31′55.00″W
Links
Webcast	Listen Live!
Website	www.kwve.com

KWVE-FM is a commercial radio station licensed to San Clemente, California, broadcasting to the Greater Los Angeles area and northern San Diego County on 107.9 FM, and in the Bakersfield area on KWVE 660 AM. KWVE-FM airs Christian programming with an emphasis on Bible teaching and Christian music of the praise and worship genre. The station is owned by Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa, with its transmitter atop Santiago Peak and studios in the church-owned Logos Building in Santa Ana, adjacent to the church campus. Most of the teaching programs on the station are locally produced by Calvary Chapel pastors. The praise and worship music, as described on the station's website, is meant to "lead one into the worship of God without attracting too much attention to the music itself." It also has two hours of Christian children's programming on Saturday mornings.

History

Before Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa purchased the station in 1985, KWVE-FM was a secular commercial music station that received poor ratings, except in the evening drive slot where they played cutting-edge punk and new wave music which pulled high Arbitron ratings. In 1982, KWVE-FM sold the 7 p.m. to midnight timeslot to Calvary Chapel as well as Sundays from 5 a.m. to noon. Their programming generated a lot of interest, and on April 15, 1985, Calvary Chapel bought the station. The church expanded the Christian programming to its current 24-hour format, but kept the KWVE call letters and K-Wave brand. KWVE-FM advertises itself as "The Wave of Living Water", in reference to its wave-themed moniker and to the New Testament phrase "living water", a term for salvation through Jesus Christ.

For most of its existence the station's call letters were simply KWVE, without the FM suffix. That changed in 2009 when Calvary Chapel purchased a defunct Christian AM radio station, KGDP in Oildale, California and renamed it KWVE, simulcasting the FM signal into the Bakersfield area. As a result, the original KWVE was legally renamed KWVE-FM.

KWVE-FM is sometimes confused with a similarly named secular smooth adult contemporary radio station in Los Angeles, KTWV (94.7 FM), known as "94.7 The Wave" and owned by CBS Radio. Then-owner Metromedia converted rock-formatted KMET to KTWV and "The Wave" on February 14, 1987, nearly two years after the launch of KWVE-FM's current format. Both stations emphasize their FM frequencies to distinguish themselves from each other, and during the 1990s KWVE-FM kept on hand in its broadcast booth KTWV's request line and business numbers as a courtesy to listeners mistakenly calling into the wrong station.

Expansion into Bakersfield

In 2009, Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa purchased KGDP AM, a Christian radio station in Oildale, California which had ceased operations the previous year. It changed the call letters to KWVE and now simulcasts KWVE-FM on 660 AM to Bakersfield and Kern County. As a result, the -FM suffix was added to the original KWVE in Orange County.

As of September 16, 2011 KWVE-FM added a second signal to the Bakersfield area, at 102.5 FM via a translator owned by Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa.

The KWave Radio Network

KWVE-FM operates a commercial-free, nonprofit version of its broadcast schedule outside the Los Angeles area. This is branded as The KWave Radio Network and is aired on three other stations owned by Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa: KWTH (91.3 FM) in Barstow, California; K284AU (104.7 FM) in Mountain Pass, California and K295AJ (98.1 FM) in North Las Vegas, Nevada. Together they create continuous signal coverage from Orange County, California to Las Vegas, Nevada along the Interstate 15 highway corridor.

The church acquired the three stations on August 11, 2011. These stations were previously owned and programmed by other ministries affiliated with the Calvary Chapel fellowship of churches. KWTH and K284AU were originally a part of the Living Proof Radio Network when they signed on the air in 2006, but later were affiliated with The KRTM Radio Network from October 27, 2010 until August 16, 2011. K295AJ originally broadcast at 106.9 FM as part of the Calvary Satellite Network for many years before signing off in June 2009. It returned to the air in November 2010 at 98.1 FM as a part of the KRTM Radio Network.

25th Anniversary

On April 15 and 16, 2010, Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa celebrated the 25th anniversary of its purchase of KWVE-FM and the station's Christian talk and music format with two evening concerts in the church sanctuary. The concerts featured Love Song, a Christian rock band founded at Calvary Chapel and popular during the Jesus Movement of the early 1970s, and messages from senior pastor Chuck Smith.

Website attacked by hackers

Beginning on October 17, 2010 visitors to KWVE-FM's website began complaining on the station's Facebook fan page that they could not access either the home page or the Flash Player live stream. The station replied that the web server experienced a hacker attack and the entire site had to be taken down while they cleared the hardware of malignant code and rebuilt the site "from the ground up". As of November 1 the site and live stream were back in operation.

Calvary Chapel Music Channel

On August 7, 2011 KWVE-FM announced on its website and Facebook page the creation of the Calvary Chapel Music Channel, a commercial-free iTunes channel streaming the station's music 24 hours a day.

HD Radio

KWVE-FM simulcasts its signal on a digital HD Radio channel, licensed as KWVE-HD1. KWave en Español, a Spanish-language channel featuring Bible teaching programs and Christian worship music similar to the original English format, was launched on an HD2 channel in 2008, but in 2010 it had switched into a local affiliate of the non-commercial KWave Radio Network (see above). As of December 2012 the HD2 station has ceased broadcasting and KWVE-FM only operates on HD1.

EAS violation

KWVE-FM is the Local Primary station of the Emergency Alert System (EAS) for Orange County, meaning that all radio stations and cable systems in the area must relay emergency information and Required Monthly Tests from KWVE-FM, when activated.

On September 15, 2009, the Federal Communications Commission fined Calvary Chapel $5,000 for a botched EAS test on October 19, 2008—on that date, the station conducted a Required Monthly Test (RMT) by mistake, instead of the scheduled Required Weekly Test. The operator aborted the test midway through, leading the station to fail to broadcast a code to indicate the end of the test, causing all stations and cable systems in the area to broadcast KWVE-FM's programming until those stations took their equipment offline or their EAS equipment had timed out (after two minutes).

After the fine was levied, every state broadcast association in the United States submitted a joint letter to the FCC, protesting against the fine, saying that the FCC could have handled the matter better. On November 13, 2009, the FCC rescinded its fine against KWVE-FM, but had still admonished the station for broadcasting an unauthorized RMT, as well as omitting the code to end the test.

External links

• KWVE-FM Official Website
• Facility details for Facility ID KWVE ({{{2}}}) in the FCC Licensing and Management System
• {{{2}}} in Nielsen Audio's FM station database