By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews
A Lincoln County judge has ordered the forfeiture and sheriff’s sale of the Newport headquarters and property of six local radio stations to satisfy unpaid bank loans.
Judge Marcia Buckley signed the foreclosure and sale order Monday, nearly a year after Oregon Coast Bank filed its foreclosure lawsuit seeking $532,000 for remaining balances on two loans.
The order is against David Miller and his wife, Linda, who own Yaquina Bay Communications and operate six stations out of a main office and studio on Alder Street in Newport’s Deco district. The Millers stations are KYTE-FM, KNPT-AM and KNCU-FM in Newport, KBCH-AM and KCRF-FM in Lincoln City, and KWDP-AM in Waldport.
Miller is also appealing for the second time a Federal Communications Commission order from June that cancelled KYTE’s license.
During a short court hearing Monday, Miller told the judge that he’s had inquiries to purchase his six stations.
“That’s what I’d wish to do,” Miller told Buckley, who has been overseeing the foreclosure effort by Oregon Coast Bank since last August. “That’s our goal – to sell and retire.”
Oregon Coast Bank says Miller owes it $414,000 in balances and interest from a 2009 loan of $755,000 and $118,000 from a 2016 loan of $110,000 — and did not pay off the balances in October and November 2021 as agreed. Both loans carried an interest rate of 8.25 percent.
The Oregon Department of Revenue and the Oregon Employment Department also have liens on Miller’s properties, according to the bank’s lawsuit.
In May, Miller paid Lincoln County $20,867 for three years of property taxes owned on the Alder Street building, according to county records.
Miller told YachatsNews after Monday’s hearing that he has an appraisal of $750,000 on his 8,000 square foot station headquarters. The company has eight full- and part-time employees and has advertised itself for sale – which Miller said drew interest last week from a station operator in the Willamette Valley.
Any sale, he said, would of course depend “on how many stations he wants and at what price.”
Miller, 72, said the pandemic devastated radio station income and the goal now is to retire. “We have 22 grandkids in Utah and Idaho … that’s where my wife wants to be.”
Neither Oregon Coast Bank nor its attorney, James Shepherd of Newport, responded to a request to comment.
Long battle with FCC
Miller said he is appealing a June 22 order from the FCC cancelling KYTE’s license and that the station is still operating.
KYTE and KNPT broadcast music, news and weather reports from a tower at Otter Crest. But technically, KYTE was licensed to serve Independence, a city in Polk County with roughly the same population as Newport, from a tower on Bald Mountain about 25 miles east of there.
Miller successfully applied to the Federal Communication Commission nine years ago for permission to change his “community of license” for KYTE from Newport to Independence.
But the FCC notified Miller this January it was cancelling the KYTE license because he was not broadcasting to the area assigned by his license.
It took Miller several years to get the off-the-grid Bald Mountain site up and running, and it wasn’t operational for long. In May 2018, Miller asked the FCC for a temporary authorization to broadcast KYTE from a tower at Otter Crest, citing malfunctioning generators at Bald Mountain and inability to find replacements. The FCC granted the authorization – but only until December 2018.
When Miller applied to renew his license three years later, a low-power radio station in Washington and rival Newport station KPPT filed objections on the basis that KYTE was not broadcasting to its community of license – Independence – and was causing interference to their stations with its antenna at Otter Crest.
The FCC told Miller it was denying his license application because he failed to broadcast to his community of license for more than one year, which results in a license’s expiration. The letter acknowledged Miller’s hardships moving to the new site, but said it must balance that with the fact that Miller broadcast from Otter Crest for three years without authorization.
In a sternly worded denial letter in June, the FCC said it rejected Yaquina Bay Communications “attempt to blame its predicament on the ‘once-in-a-lifetime poor economic conditions’ caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“In the present case YBC’s difficulties ultimately stemmed from its business decisions in site selection and equipment purchases,” the denial letter said.
- Quinton Smith is the editor of YachatsNews.com and can be reached at YachatsNews@gmail.com