Get RAMped Up: East County Magazine

By Karen Pearlman

Jan. 31, 2026 (Borrego Springs) – K-RAM 90.5 FM is hitting the airwaves this week.

After years of radio static, the new station out of Borrego Springs will start broadcasting to the greater San Diego County desert community starting this Friday, Feb. 6. Its license was granted March 19, 2025.

Gabriel Wisdom, a legendary San Diego radio figure from the 1970s at KGB-FM in San Diego and at KMET Los Angeles, is behind the launch of KRAM 90.5 FM. The FCC licensed non-commercial station is in the old Wells Fargo bank building at Christmas Circle in Borrego Springs, an unincorporated community of about 3,100 adjacent to the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park.

K-RAM has a partnership to rebroadcast KPBS-FM out of San Diego, with plans to insert Borrego-centric news, community-based talk and weather. The station will also serve as a critical node for emergency information if cell towers or landlines fail during storms, wildfires, earthquakes or other crises.

“Our goal is to strengthen and amplify the shared voices of a very unique desert community,” Wisdom said.

The partnership provides Borrego residents with a reliable broadcast bridge to San Diego’s public media and cultural programming -- programming that has previously been difficult to receive in the desert, and which will now bring Borrego Springs more connectivity with, in and to the rest of San Diego County.

“K-RAM will allow the community to connect with San Diego and the outside world, facilitating communication and exchange,” Wisdom said. “Car and home radio access to important news information is crucial for survival and cultural sustainability.”

It’s been a long time coming, he admits.

“The process has taken over three years of persistence and would never have seen the light of day without the help of veteran station consultant Morgan Skinner of Rockwell Media (out of St. George, Utah) and his team,” Wisdom said.

Skinner had more than six decades of experience creating radio and TV stations so associated challenges were familiar to him.

Wisdom said getting the station started involved clearing “one major bureaucratic hurdle.”

“(The issue) was cured by our receiving a small Community Grant from County Supervisor Jim Desmond’s office,” Wisdom said. “And then, Morgan Skinner suddenly died (in June 2025) and I seriously considered abandoning the whole project. As it turned out, Morgan had introduced me to San Diego broadcast engineer Thomas Werner, who has now built the radio facility, and will continue to maintain the station.”

Personal connection and community care

K-RAM is also a full-circle moment for part-time desert dweller Wisdom, who will bring the blast of his radio past along with a mission to serve the desert community.

Beyond his former DJ persona, Wisdom is a seasoned and well-known financier with American Money Management, LLC, and published book author (“Wisdom on Value Investing,” “Salton Sea Stories”) who was even briefly portrayed in author Cameron Crowe’s semi-autobiographical film “Almost Famous.”

Wisdom, an FAA Certified Flight Instructor, also built an architecturally fascinating home at Borrego Valley Airport that people can rent out.

“Like other general aviation pilots in Southern California, I’ve enjoyed flying into and out of the Borrego Valley Airport…and managed to (sort of) convince my wife, Diana, that ‘we’ should build an octagon-shaped house on a vacant lot next to the runway,” Wisdom said. “We did build a Pilot House that looks like a four-bladed propeller from the air. During our visits to ‘The Borrego Pilot House,’, I found there was no clear radio reception. When the opportunity for K-RAM 90.5 FM presented itself, I became interested.”

K-RAM’s studio site is hard to miss. The building features an exquisite mural by artist Anne-Sophie Gaudet, depicting a bighorn sheep under Borrego’s “International Dark Sky Community.”

K-RAM is operating under the Ram Media Foundation, a nonprofit public charity established by Skinner to strengthen community through local media and creative communication.

While no sale price was shared, Wisdom said that he and his wife “have donated the funds necessary for the buildout and ongoing operations. Our plan is to make additional gifts as may be needed.”

According to the organization’s website, its mission is to amplify local voices and provide platforms that inform, connect and reflect the Borrego Springs community.

“Each initiative under the Foundation supports community connection, cultural expression, and public engagement through storytelling and media,” the Ram Media Foundation’s website said.

Rams and the Salton Sea

Wisdom is quite obviously a desert aficionado.

“Borrego Springs has many natural wonders which is why people choose to live there or visit and explore,” he said.

The station’s call letters K-RAM are a nod to the desert Bighorn sheep that roam the foothills in the region. There are an estimated 300 to 500 endangered Peninsular bighorn sheep in the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park near Borrego Springs, with recent counts showing a stable population.

Additionally, the region’s environmentally troubled body of water, the Salton Sea, is also close to Wisdom’s heart.

Wisdom said that the inspiration for his book “Salton Sea Tales” seeks to correct a false narrative characterizing the Salton Sea as “accidental lake that would never have existed if not for a levee break in 1905.”

He said that K-RAM radio’s alliance with KPBS will bring critical environmental information like that to the communities of Borrego Valley.

“The 350-square mile saline lake has been an essential Pacific Flyway stopover for millions of migrating birds,” he explained. “Today, it is a human-caused ecological disaster area. The same is occurring at other large saline lakes in the U.S. and around the world. I wanted to write a fast-paced adventure novel that speculates on potential future outcomes. The inciting incident and climax of the story are based upon plausible ecological/geological science.”

Wisdom said the Ram Media Foundation also has additional plans which align with the radio station mission and will be announced later this year.

Wisdom said he and other Foundation members tested the station’s signal in January and said he will never forget “the thrill of hearing the station loud and clear on my car radio while driving the entire circumference of the Valley and all the way up the mountain.”

“After years of radio static, I sincerely hope that local residents can experience it like I did, and every day going forward,” he said.

Wisdom said that is his hope that everyone in or passing through Borrego Springs will see the radio station building with its colorful mural, call letters and frequency.

“Success means that K-RAM 90.5 FM becomes the go-to daily source for essential news, quality journalism and updates,” he said.



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