South Valley fans of singers such as Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Elvis Presley will soon have a "new" station to turn to on their radios,

"It isn't new, it's been on the air," said Fritz Ashauer, the owner of the station, KZKC 89.9FM in Kettleman City.

The station, which was known as K-Wave, had been featuring Biblical teaching programs and religious music.

The new format won't really be a "new" one, Ashauer explained. The station will be known as "Kings Radio" and play the greatest hits from the 1930s through the 1960s.

If that sounds familiar, yes, the new Kings Radio will have the same format as the Kings Radio that was at 103.3FM until February, when issues with the FCC forced its owner to close the station down.

"I'm not going to do anything different," he said, but added, "I'll have some religious programming on Sunday from noon to 2 p.m."

The religious programming will be Melissa Scott's live service from Glendale.

Ashauer owns 15 radio stations, most of them in Wyoming. Five of them are "actual stations" with call letters. The others are "translators," stations that extend the reach of the five stations across the states of Wyoming, Idaho, Montana and Utah.

Ashauer, who was born in Visalia in 1937, described himself as self-taught.

"I came up through the ranks of broadcasting before there were computers, and later when there were computers," he said. "All the stations I have I built myself."

Ashauer has been in the music business for more than 60 years. He owned a music store and recorded albums for local bands in Santa Barbara, and later did contract engineering work for 15 stations in Utah.

He received his first broadcasting license from the Federal Communications Commission (the FCC) in the 1960s.

He plans to operate Kings Radio the same way he runs his other stations – without a studio.

"I can run all my stations on my laptop," he said, noting that he has a large library of music on his computer and can insert commercials as needed.

"I'm an engineer," he said. "I know how to do all of this. I computerized a lot of stations."

Ashauer expects his Valley station to start broadcasting "great songs" sometime in July. He first plans to install a more powerful antenna to ensure that his station reaches "Fresno, Visalia, Bakersfield and all those little towns in between."