KRPQ became Rohnert Park’s first radio station when broadcasts began on February 28, 1986. 36 year old Pennsylvania native Ron Castro was living the dream of many a disc jockey: he’d managed to get a license to start his own radio station. The “DJ becomes owner” angle generated plenty of media attention; an August 1986 column by Bill Mann in the Oakland Tribune for example.
It had been a seven-year process after the Federal Communications Commission opened up a new FM channel in Rohnert Park. Castro, working at KSAN, K-101 and KYUU while commuting from Petaluma, ended up with three partners known as Sunrise Broadcasting. Lynn Hendel, Steve Watts, and Dr. Anetha Baxter had all been original applicants for the license as well.
“Q-105” launched as a Contemporary Country-formatted station. Castro handled the morning show and served as general manager and program director.
Mixing in some programming delivered by satellite, KRPQ stuck to the Contemporary Country path into the 1990s. The spring 1992 Santa Rosa Arbitron ratings showed the station trailing rocker KXFX and Adult Contemporary powerhouse KZST among Sonoma County stations, but posting a healthy 7.6 share of the 12+ audience.
Castro would go on to become an investor in a number of other stations through Sunrise Broadcasting. In 1994, Sunrise sold KRPQ to Results Radio of Sonoma, a limited partnership of which Castro was managing general partner. Castro and Results Radio co-founder Jack Fritz would go on to buy a number of Northern California stations in markets such as Redding, Chico, and Yuba City/Marysville.
Castro’s long push to get a radio station on the air turned into a big payday in 2006 when Results Radio sold KRPQ to Maverick Media for $7.7 million. The deal included another Results Radio station, Windsor’s KMHX, which had gone on the air in 1997. Castro had served as general manager of both KRPQ and KMHX.
Maverick Media immediately moved the KMHX call letters and Hot Adult Contemporary format to KRPQ’s 104.9 FM frequency, spelling the end of the KRPQ call letters. The new station would bill itself as “The New Mix 104.9”.
As the advertisement at left indicates, Castro, Fritz and Results Radio had leveraged modern studio and voice-tracking technology to run smaller-market radio stations at a profit.
As for the 104.9 frequency in Rohnert Park, it would change hands a couple more times. In 2013, Maverick Media sold its Sonoma County cluster of stations for $4.5 million to Lawrence Amaturo, a Sonoma County car dealer whose father Joseph had previously been in radio ownership.
Lawrence Amaturo’s new company, Amaturo Sonoma Media Group, operated “Mix 104.9” until 2021. In the aftermath of the devastating 2019 Kincade Fire, public broadcaster Northern California Media found itself without a transmitter for its station KRCB.
Northern California Media approached Amaturo Sonoma Media Group about the station, by then known as K-Hits 104.9 KDHT. While the station was not officially on the market, a deal was done for $1.5 million–including FCC approval for changing the license’s status from commercial to non-commercial.
Northern California Media gained a more powerful signal than it had before, moving the KRCB call letters from their previous home at 91.1 FM.
