Cal Lutheran negotiating to buy second radio station.

California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks could soon own its own mini-chain of radio stations if its deal to acquire Santa Barbara-based KDB-FM is finalized in the next few weeks.

"We're very interested in acquiring the station from Pacific Broadcasting Co.," said Mary Olson, general manager for Cal Lutheran's campus radio station KCLU-FM, who is heading discussions with KDB-FM.

Last year, UC Santa Barbara tried to acquire the Pacific Broadcasting station, but the deal fell through when the school was unable to come up with more than $3 million for the purchase. A three-month fundraising drive netted just $400,000 before the school called it quits on the effort.

Roby Scott, Pacific Broadcasting president and KDB-FM general manager, confirmed he is in talks with Cal Lutheran and that the asking price for the station is $3.6 million.

Cal Lutheran is a private university with an enrollment of 2,900 students. KDB-FM is Pacific Broadcasting's only station.

"The ball is in their court right now and they said they'll respond to our proposal," Scott said, which includes an understanding that Cal Lutheran would maintain the station's current classical music format.

The Federal Communications Commission prohibits sales contracts from requiring that a radio station maintain a particular format as a condition for its sale, but Scott said the request for the station to keep its classical format would not be a part of the formal contract. He said he is merely seeking a pledge from Cal Lutheran to keep the format.

"They can do whatever they want, but we ask them to keep the classical music format simply because that's something we'd like the people here to have," Scott said.

Olson said the school wants to keep the current format and use the station to give Cal Lutheran a higher profile in northern Ventura County and the Central Coast area, where the bulk of its students come from.

The school's current station, KCLU-FM, has 3,200 watts of power and reaches only as far north as Ventura. KDB-FM has 50,000 watts of power and can be heard as far north as San Luis Obispo and as far south as Thousand Oaks.

More importantly, KCLU-FM's deal with National Public Radio precludes it from carrying conventional advertising and from promoting the university to the extent it would like to.

"We're limited in what we can do, so we don't have 60-second jingles to promote things," Olson said.

But with KDB-FM, the school could run its own programs or commercials touting the school, its activities and programs.

"It would definitely open things up for us," she said.

Olson said that if the school acquires KDB-FM, it will continue to operate KCLU-FM as it currently does and has no plans to either sell or merge it with the larger station.

Dave Barrett, former KIQQ Radio general manager and local radio watcher, said that, while many universities own radio stations (often with the intention of acting as a training ground for broadcasting students), it's unusual for a university to own two.

"You don't see it very often, but it's clearly to their advantage to be able to promote the university in a large affluent area," he said.

Scott wouldn't reveal revenue figures for the station, but said the operation has been profitable "for years."

The station conducts and promotes a number of classical music programs that have been a mainstay of the Santa Barbara cultural scene for decades. Among them are the annual KDB-FM Messiah Singalong conducted every Christmas with local classical musicians and singers performing Handel's "Messiah." Another is the annual KDB-FM Grand Ball, featuring local musicians performing Strauss waltzes.

"Before we came along, there was no Opera Santa Barbara, no Music Theater, no Camerata Pacifica or the Santa Barbara Master Chorale," Scott said.

Currently Santa Barbara County's sole classical music station, KDB-FM's roots date back to 1926 when Ventura businessman C.F. Richardson founded the station with the call letters KFCR. In 1929, George Barnes bought the station and changed the call letters to KDB after his wife Dorothy.

After being bought and sold several times, the station was acquired by Pacific Broadcasting Co. in 1971, which switched its so-called "Easy Listening" format to its current classical music in 1982.

KCLU-FM began broadcasting in 1994 as a National Public Radio affiliate with a jazz format. The station's $404,000 annual budget is funded by both subsidies from the school and traditional public radio membership drives, Olson said.