NO STATION LOGO IS AVAILABLE. PROBABLY DOESN’T EVEN EXIST!
The ghost station of Omaha is a mysterious radio signal at 1490 AM, seemingly without owners, advertisers or disc jockeys, that plays a continuous loop of artists such as Buddy Holly, Petula Clark and Bobby Darin, Neil Diamond and Barbra Streisand.
The only voices heard are in short station promos.“Magic 1490,” ntones an announcer. “The height of relaxation.”
Occasionally, a promo will feature someone who sounds like a listener who called in with a message of praise. “Just keep laying those hit records!” says a woman with great enthusiasm. What number she called is a mystery.
Nobody seems to know much about the station. The Federal Communications Commission admitted it was stumped in papers led last month. The airwave regulator said in the filing that it could find neither the owners nor the studio.
The station operates under the call letters KOMJ. There are no commercials leaving questions about who is paying for the pogramming.
The FCC said in its filing that the station is owned by Chochise Broadcasting, in Jackson, Wyo. The agency said it could find no phone number for the company, no website.
The saga took another twist when the FCC dug deeper into the studio location. The agency said it found an unnamed attorney who served as contact person for the station. The attorney, filings say, said the main studio is at 10714 Mockingbird Dr., Omaha.
The FCC investigated further, sending an inspector there.
That report says: “This location is the main studio for the Journal Broadcast Group stations in Omaha. The staff for the journal Broadcast Group stations stated that station KOMJ’s main studio was not located at 10714 Mockingbird Dr. and that no one associated with station KOMJ worked at the location.”
Lack of a studio and lack of an address for the licensee operating on FCC-regulated airwaves is frowned upon.
The FCC enforcement action reads: “Every permittee or licensee of an AM, FM, TV or Class A TV station in the commercial broadcast services shall maintain a public inspection file. The file shall be available for public inspection at any time during regular business hours.”
And that is where it stands. Meantime the music rolls on, oblivious to the administrative confusion.