All-news KQV plans to sign off for good at end of the year
the possibility some investor or buyer may come along in the interim, though he’s made no active efforts to sell KQV.
“Candidly, I think it’s a sad day for broadcasting,” he said in a phone interview. “It’s fair to say we’ve been trying to provide a community service. The bottom line is, I just can’t sustain the business model. We’re an independent, labor-intensive format, and we were happy to take it on as long as we could financially do it.”
Mr. Dickey, 61, whose sister and business partner, Cheryl Scott, died last month, said KQV would continue all an all-news-all-the-time format. of its existing programming Mr. Dickey’s father, the until the end of the year. late Robert W. Dickey Sr., was After that, he’s not sure what, a station manager who got financial if anything, anyone will hear backing from billionaire when tuning in to 1410. Richard Mellon Scaife to
“If you tune to us on Jan. form Calvary Inc. and purchase 1, you probably won’t hear the station from Taft anything,” he said. Broadcasting in 1982.
That will be a switch for The senior Mr. Dickey many Pittsburghers, died in 2011, and before Mr. whether they are news Scaife’s own death in 2014 he junkies or baby boomers sold his shares to the Dickey who grew up in the 1960s and family in 2013. Mr. Dickey Jr. early 1970s using KQV as and his sister ran it, with her their first source of Top 40 as president and business music. manager, and Mr. Dickey
As FM became the primary said it became clear after her radio format to hear rock or recent passing that it would other music, KQV in 1975 became be difficult to continue. one of a number of stations The news format, due to nationally switching to the salary costs of the necessary number of reporters, editors and announcers involved, is much more costly than music programming on radio, Mr. Dickey said. At the same time, the media industry in general has been suffering from a drop in advertising by major retailers and others. Mr. Dickey said he did not consider a format change at the station because of his family’s longtime focus on delivering news.
“We perceived the world of reporting on the news as a sacred one,” he said. “What made this worthwhile is not that we were making money, but that we were doing something important.”
In the corporate-dominated broadcast industry, Mr. Dickey said part of KQV’s strength was its independent, family ownership that was immediately responsive to staff, listeners, advertisers and others.
“There’s got to be commitment to the product, and that attitude kept the station on air for as many years as it has,” he said. “We didn’t want to sacrifice the quality of the product by cutting costs, letting people go. We curbed costs [by other means] as muchas we could.”
Although he’s uncertain what will happen to the broadcasting license, Mr. Dickey said there’s also value in potential sale of the North Hills property holding its transmission towers.
Regardless of its future, the station will retain its storied history, with roots traced to 1919. In addition to its many modern broadcast journalists, it will be remembered as the former “Groovy QV” that once captured teens’ attention with not just rock, soul and pop music but colorful disc jockeys, including Chuck Brinkman, Jim Quinn and “Jeff Christie,” the pseudonym used in the early 1970s by future conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh.