Lotus Communications has assumed control of a Class A FM radio station serving Fresno from the west that was once owned by the late Art Laboe.
The company led by Jim Kalmenson is already operating the station under a Time Brokerage Agreement, and seeks to capture older audiences of Mexican heritage in the same manner it is doing so at KFWB in Los Angeles.
That venerable AM, once a pioneering Top 40 and an all-News station under Group W/Westinghouse, is now Regional Mexican Oldies as “La Mera Mera,” and a similar, locally programmed operation is now on the air at KOKO-FM 94.3 in Kerman, Calif. It has a booster to reach parts of Fresno that would otherwise have difficulty receiving a clear signal.
The arrangement is thanks to a facility swap seeking FCC approval that puts KOKO in Lotus’ hands in exchange of KGST-AM 1600 in Fresno, with that property going to the operators of Desh Punjab Radio, doing business in the market as TEG Broadcasting. Sukhdev Dhillon is the President of DPR.
With the agreement comes confirmation of the end of a Time Brokerage Agreement that saw TEG and Punjab operate Lotus’ KWAC-AM 1490 in Bakersfield. This concluded on June 1 after one year, and KWAC is now under Lotus control as a Hispanic religious station under the leadership of market General Manager Daisy Ortiz.
Serving as TEG’s broker of record is Jorgenson Broadcast Brokerage. Its legal counsel is Anthony T. Lepore of Radiotvlaw Associates.
The trade formally negates a transactions originally announced in August 2022 in which Lotus was to sell KWAC-AM to a predecessor operation linked to Dhillon, Baaz Broadcasting Corp., for $300,000. Additionally, Baaz had agreed to acquire KGST for $850,000 in a separate agreement.
Those deals were brokered by Jorgenson. However, a non-consummation resulted in this newly crafted facility swap.
For KOKO-FM, a July 2023 transaction put what had been a “Jammin’ Oldies” station emblematic of the late Laboe’s focus on rhythmic classics from the 1960s through the 1990s in the hands of Dhillon.
TEG paid $330,000 for the FM and its FM booster from Dale Berger’s Big Broadcasting. KOKO’s ownership under Laboe came in 1998.
