PORT TOWNSEND – Seventh-day Adventist Church head elder Glenn Gately makes it as clear as holy water: He’s on a mission from God.
The focus of that mission, he says, is to spread the word that Jesus is coming soon.
And what better way, he asks, than a radio station based in Port Townsend with a transmitter tower in the North Olympic Mountains?
“It’s not just that we want a radio station,” he said.
“We’ve got a message and we want to get it out every way we can.
“It’s a way of getting into people’s homes,” added the pious, prayerful and earnest Gately, who admits he has no broadcasting experience.
“The spiritual message – that’s what the radio station is all about.”
Gately’s church, led by The Rev. Kim Berg, pastor, and the church board, filed a Federal Communications Commission broadcast license application in October that competes with others in Port Townsend and Sequim.
Those applicants, whose primary focus is community service-oriented rather than religiously based, worry that Gately’s church leads the pack for the FCC license.
The reason, all involved agree, is that the church’s application estimates it will serve a potential audience of 101,000, using a transmitter tower at Maynard Peak.
The tower, which is on state Department of Natural Resouces land south of Gardiner, would beam signals west of Sequim about halfway to Port Angeles and east to Whidbey and Camano islands.
The noncommercial station’s effective radiated power would be 1,000 watts, Gately said.
The church’s radio reach at 91.1 FM, as proposed to the FCC, would also extend north of the tip of Quimper Peninsula to Port Ludlow, south.
“He’s got the winning application, according to the FCC rules, because they’re proposing to covering more of an area,” said Sherry Jones, who has led the Radio PT charge for a community radio station to serve the Quimper Peninsula area south to Port Ludlow.
Gately agrees, saying the church has the advantage, with a leading spread of audience proposed in its application.
Jones says FCC officials have encouraged her group, and Sequim Community Broadcasters, to work out a solution that avoids crossing low-power noncommercial FM radio signals.
There is also conflict with an applicant for 91.9 FM in Friday Harbor.
“The FCC placed the burden on us,” Jones said.
“They said, ‘You figure this out amongst yourselves.'”
Radio PT and Sequim Community Broadcasters propose similar program, including music, entertainment, news and information.
Gately, sitting in a pew at the uptown Port Townsend church at Bentley and Jefferson streets, said he hopes an agreement can be reached that will allow all three groups a place on the airwaves.
“I hope they’re able to get on the air also,” Gately said.
“We don’t want to compete with them.”
Gately and Jones have already discussed the situation, with Gately turning down an offer to settle for a couple of hours of airtime on Radio PT.
Jones said her group is working with the FCC through a broadcast engineer and attorney to relocate their proposed radio transmission tower site at Port Townsend city reservoir’ off 20th and Howard streets to a site near the Strait of Juan de Fuca between Cape George and McCurdy Point.
The tower relocation could avoid the church’s signal, she said.
“We do think that we do have an option that sidesteps this problem/”
The extra work is costing the Radio PT about $6,000, Jones said.
That’s in addition to the $64,000 in local pledges of support to start up the station at 91.5 FM should the FCC grant its license.
Pledges can be made by phoning 360-379-8122 or to radiopt@olympus.net.
Radio PT has a Web site at www.olympus.net/community/radiopt.
None of the applicants knows when the FCC will name the successful licensee.
“I felt like God is in this station and it’s going to go ahead,” said Gately, a 63-year-old Marrowstone Island resident, career fishery biologist and member of the church since 1984.
Gately says the church has about 50 active members and has been in Port Townsend since 1923.
The station’s broadcast studio could be located in a former apartment at the Jefferson Better Living Center on Bentley Street, Gately said.
The center is a church-supported organization that provides clothing and household items to help the needy.
At this point, Gately said, he knows only that two full-time employees would be needed to run the station.
As far as programming, he said, “I don’t know what we’ll have. We’re still praying on that.”
Asked if there will be local community service programming, he said, “I you can put something on the air that will tell them how to live forever versus who won the last ball game.
“Which is more important?”
He said that the Seventh-day Adventist Church’s nationally broadcast programming through 3 Angels Broadcasting Network was one solid option.
“It’s not going to be all spiritual, like the Bible now,” he said.
“Seventh-day Adventists are very health conscious, so the local programming may take that direction.”
Radio programming about good parenting and marriage counseling is also important to the church, he said.
Until he hears the news, Gately says he and his church brethren will hope and pray.
“I haven’t heard from the FCC,” Gately said.
“From what I’ve heard, it could be months or years before we get it.”
