Change Makes AM Station Part of Grand Forks Market

The FCC has granted a construction permit to KMSR/1520 (Mayville) that moves the station, on paper, into the Grand Forks market.

The permit calls for KMSR to change its community of license to Northwood and increase its daytime power from 1.3kW to 1.5kW, but remain at its longtime transmitter site between Mayville and Portland. The station is already ID’ing as Northwood:

Northwood is about 20 miles northwest of Mayville and is in Grand Forks County, making it part of Nielsen Audio’s Grand Forks market.

The move would apparently give the Grand Forks market 15 full-power radio licenses, pushing it into the next tier for ownership caps. The market cap would rise from five to six, and the number of stations that could be owned on the FM band would rise from three to four.

Though KMSR’s application does not state its motivation for the change, it would appear that the addition of a station to the Grand Forks market would allow iHeartMedia to pull KSNR/100.3 (Fisher, MN-Grand Forks) out of trust. iHeart had to place KSNR into trust two years ago because its grandfathered ownership of four FM stations in the market could not be transferred when the company went through a reorganization.

KMSR recently launched FM translator K255DG/98.9 (Mayville) and is operated alongside KMAV/105.5 (Mayville).