This informative video by @lainaminute (L.A. in a Minute) on Instagram expands on something I anticipated when I shot this photo album of the KSPN/710 transmitter site at 12775 Burbank Boulevard almost four years ago: that the land under the transmitter—19 acres of fenced-in grass surrounded by suburbs—would be put up for sale by Disney, which at the time owned the station.
I’m surprised it took this long. I suppose Disney had to deal with zoning or something. This is perhaps the most prime real estate I’ve ever seen for sale of radio station transmitter property. Dig:
Because this Google Maps satellite view was shot in winter, when rains turn everything green, the site looks verdant. But in fact it is brown and flammable for most of every year. But this aerial view at least makes clear that the space needs to be a park.
Click on that map (or here), zoom out, and you’ll see there are no parks within a walk or a short drive of any of the houses in that part of Burbank or the San Fernando Valley (in which Burbank reposes), with the exception of some grassy grounds meant for other non-park purposes (football, baseball) at Los Angeles Valley College, and along the Tujunga Wash Greenway, a narrow strip of not-always-green flanking a flood mitigation channel that is charmless except for the community-painted graffiti mural called The Great Wall of Los Angeles.
In 2021, Disney sold the licenses of KSPN, along with WEPN/1050 in New York (originally WHN and WMGM), WMVP/1000 (originally WCFL) in Chicago, and some other stuff, to Good Karma Brands, while keeping the real estate under the transmitters, which in the cases of KSPN and WMVP were valuably surrounded by suburbs. (WEPN is on a swamp in the New Jersey “Meadowlands” that I suspect it does not own.)
In 2022, KSPN moved its transmitter to the five-tower Irwindale site KWVE/1110, a Christian talker that was, decades ago, the much-loved top 40 KRLA. The signal from the new site is weaker (down from 50,000 watts by day and 1000o watts by night to 35,000 and 2500 watts respectively) but still adequate to cover the metro. WMVP likewise has a construction permit to move to a lesser facility where it can share the towers of another station—surely so Disney can sell that land as well.
According to various AIs I’ve asked, the land at 12775 Burbank Boulevard would sell for $35 million to $60 million. I think Los Angeles should come up with the money and make it a park.
We have a model for how this might look and work: Columbia Park, in Torrance, a suburb on the southwest side of Los Angeles (amidst the same sprawl). Here is how it looks to Google’s satellite:
The red dot is for KNX/1070, whose two towers have stood on the site since 1938. The site gets its name from the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), which owned KNX for most of its life. How Columbia Park came about should be a model for how 12775 Burbank Boulevard can become a site of equal civic grace and pride for its neighborhood.
As for AM radio, the way it’s going now, what’s left of it will be a mess religion and right-wing talk in just a few more years. (Though I think it would be smart for public broadcasters to hoover up devalued or abandoned AM stations while the licenses are still there for the taking.)
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