Our original Domain Insight report regarding the planned relaunch of “The Mighty 1090” XEPRS Rosarito/San Diego from April 9 (see below) has been confirmed by planned operator Bill Hagen in the San Diego Union-Tribune.

Hagen told the newspaper that he has signed a five year lease of the station from owner Andreas Bichara. The station will be rebranded as “The Mightier 1090” featuring a mix of Sports and Lifestyle Talk.

The Union-Tribune also confirms that former XEPRS afternoon hosts Scott Kaplan and Billy Ray Smith’s “Scott & BR Show” will return to their former 3pm timeslot upon the relaunch of the station. Hagen gave the newspaper a vague “Summer, if not sooner” timeframe for the relaunch stating, “We have to a ton of work to do. We just wanted to announce that it is coming back.”

Original Report 4/9: One year ago tomorrow, Broadcast Company of the Americas Sports “Mighty 1090” XEPRS Rosarito/San Diego was evicted by the station’s license holder Andreas Bichara. While the programming would remain for a few weeks longer as a webcaster, the plug was pulled on the entire company at the end of April 2019.

An ad agency may be on its way to resurrecting the Sports format with a “Mightier” brand name. Bill Hagen’s Out The Window Advertising, which focuses on ad campaigns for car dealers in the southwest, is teasing the launch of “The Mightier 1090” following the recent domain registrations of Mightier1090.com and TheMightier1090.com. A splash page on each features a tweaked version of XEPRS’s old logo above the San Diego skyline.

On his podcast yesterday former XEPRS host Scott Kaplan, who previously attempted to resurrect the station himself, noted that Hagen has a signed deal in place to relaunch the station and he is talking with him about ways to get back on the air and build a new brand.

Kaplan stated, “I’m in daily conversations with a gentleman here in town who has a deal now in place with the same people I was negotiating with last year down in Mexico. The deal is signed, sealed and delivered. This guy is ready to put 1090 back on the air in San Diego and I’ve been working with him to try and figure out if I want to commit this much time, energy, effort, people, resources, etc. But as we’re talking more and getting down to it we want to add radio to what we do. We don’t want to stop doing what we’re doing and just go back to radio, we want to add the radio airwaves. It’s a year later and we’re talking about this thing still.” He later added, “He’s not trying to run this in a traditional way. He doesn’t have millions of dollars to go pay people’s salaries and put together health benefits. He’s really thinking about can we get on the air as fast as possible and rebuild not THE brand, but build a new brand just using the transmission that we use with names that you might know.”