Oregon radio stations play musical chairs on the dial.

Byline: Mark Baker The Register-Guard

It's still Eugene-Springfield's top-rated radio station, it's still a little bit (make that a lot) country, but today will be KKNU-FM's fifth day at a new spot on your radio dial.

Formerly New Country 93.1 FM, it's now at 93.3 FM. That's not much of a change, just one spot on the dial. But why it's changed is a "Who's on first?" scenario that can be explained by the intricacies of the Federal Communications Commission, the movement of several FM frequencies in Oregon and Washington - and cold hard cash.

"We're just getting a check," John Tilson, owner of Eugene's McKenzie River Broadcasting, which owns KKNU, said somewhat in jest.

That's pretty much all KKNU had to do in agreeing to move its spot on the dial, sit back and accept some money (although Tilson would not say how much) from the station, KAST-FM, that asked the FCC for the change. KAST wanted to move its signal from Astoria to Gladstone after being purchased by California-based Salem Communications. The Christian broadcasting station is now part of the Portland market.

Changing your frequency is costly, said Stephanie Kilmer, the general manager at K-Dock, Coos Bay's "oldies" station, which went from 93.5 FM to 92.9 FM on Saturday. You're not only changing your identity, you've got to order new business cards, new stationery, put new numbers on the station's car, pay to promote the new frequency, perform engineering work and sometimes buy a new antenna, as K-Dock did, to move three spots on the dial, Kilmer said.

Moving into the Portland market makes KAST, which went from 92.9 to 93.1, a much wealthier station, said Dominic Monahan, an attorney with Luvaas Cobb in Eugene, who represented Tillamook's KTIL-FM, one of the stations involved in the shuffle. How much wealthier is unknown because the stations are not required to provide that information.

All the stations involved in the move - KKNU, KAST, KDCQ (K-Dock), KTIL, and Portland's KPDQ and Long Beach, Wash.'s KAQX - changed dial spots simultaneously on Saturday.

The radio-dial moves were set in motion in 2002 when The Dalles-based KMCQ wanted to move its frequency to Covington, Wash., Monahan said. That proposal started a five-channel shift , Monahan said.

But that proposal was opposed by several parties, including New Northwest, the Astoria-based communications company that used to owned KAST and wanted to move it to Gladstone.

Radio-dial movement like this were precipitated by FCC rule changes in the 1980s, Monahan said. The FCC relaxed the rules on frequency changes because FM dials across the country were becoming jam-packed, he said. "You didn't have to demonstrate need, you just had to show that if it fits technically, you can have it," he said.