CULTURE
$1 transfer deal saves eclectic Bay Area radio station

By Timothy Karoff,
Culture Reporter
July 11, 2025


FILE: Students pose for the camera in the KVHS studio in 1975.
Courtesy KVHS

On June 1, 90.5 FM went quiet in Contra Costa County after a community radio station’s lease expired. Now, after a buyer purchased the station’s license for just $1, KVHS is set to start broadcasting again.

In its current form, the noncommercial radio station broadcasts an eclectic mix of news and music. It’s now run by four volunteers, but for decades beforehand, KVHS was the student-led radio station of Clayton Valley High School, where students learned electronics skills and practiced broadcasting. In 2012, Clayton Valley High School converted to a charter school and left Mount Diablo Unified School District, effectively ending the educational training programs at KVHS.

In a May meeting, Mount Diablo Unified School District, which has owned the station since it started broadcasting in 1969, opted to sell off the KVHS’s FCC license and let the lease for its transmitter tower expire on June 30. For the past two decades, KVHS broadcast from a radio tower in the Concord hills, to the north of state Route 4. MDUSD had paid for the tower’s lease, but it proved expensive: The school district calculated that in the past 20 years, it spent $447,456.83 on the lease.

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