A LOW-POWER FULL-POWER FM: Your Primary Editorial Voice(tm) toured around in the OMW Mobile(tm) on a drive from Portage County, into Tallmadge and then Cuyahoga Falls, with the sole purpose of checking out the currently low-power signal of Cumulus rock WRQK/106.9 Canton, otherwise known as “Rock 107”.
Low-power’s the word for it, alright.
Let’s put it this way – WRQK includes not only Canton and Massillon in their legal ID, but also Akron and Alliance. No one in either city is listening to this reduced signal.
In parts of the drive above, “Rock 107” was fighting it out signal-wise with Jones Radio’s syndicated evening show hosted by Lia Knight…which we’d assume was coming from Clear Channel’s “Buckeye Country” in Marion, WMRN/106.9. Neither signal was listenable for any period of time.
We don’t know much about what happened, but OMW does hear the station has been operating only on its exciter for at least part of the past few days. We previously reported folks working on the WRQK transmitter, which is located at 22nd Street near Whipple Avenue in Canton – co-located with the studio and transmitter facility for religious/talk WCER/900.
All of this comes just days before Clear Channel is scheduled to take over WRQK’s operations, in an LMA that – at last report – was set to begin on Friday.
MORE OLDIES: While we’re electronically in Canton, just one note about a topic which consumed a lot of energy here – rumored changes at NextMedia oldies WHBC/1480 in the Hall of Fame City.
About the only thing we’re hearing lately is that the Canton outlet may actually be expanding its oldies library, at the behest of local staff wanting to open up the playlist.
We hear that NextMedia corporate programming types are still trying to figure out what might be demographically desirable for the Canton station’s long-term future.
And for that matter, we’re not getting any word that any of this is imminent, or even definite…so, enjoy it now!
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