It's still running Dale Edwards' gospel format, at least as of last night, but...
The station set to adopt Good Karma Broadcasting's ESPN Radio format is now known to the FCC as WBKC. 1540/Cleveland took those calls officially on Tuesday, as outgoing owner Edwards' D&E Communications swapped the WABQ calls to co-owned 1460/Painesville.
That facility has been running gospel music since last week, when it broke from a simulcast with classical WCLV/104.9 Lorain.
It's probably a safe guess that Good Karma's Craig Karmazin doesn't intend on keeping the WBKC calls, unless he just doesn't care what the call letters are on his new facility - which will be known by its on-air moniker "ESPN Cleveland". He did keep the calls on his main Milwaukee sports outlet, WAUK/1510 Waukesha WI...
Thursday, October 26, 2006
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The WBKC call letters were first assigned in 1969 to the second Chardon station on 1560 Khz.
The first station went on the air in the early 1960's as WGLD, a 500-watt daytimer. It went dark about 1965.
Al Kipp, who was GM of WELW 1330 in Willoughby at the time, was hired by a new group to put the station back on the air. They built studios and a four-tower directional array on Aquilla Road east of route 44 in Chardon, boosting power to 1000 watts with a very tight directional pattern, the largest lobe of the signal beamed up into populous Lake County. At one time, WBKC even had a satellite studio at the Great Lakes Mall. Al Kipp did much of the field engineering work for the construction permit.
The call letters WBKC stood for this:
the B was for Oliver Bolton, Congresswoman Frances Bolton's son, and one of the owners. The K stood for Albert King, owner of the Chardon-based King Trucking Company, another owner. The C stood for Chardon.
This group owned the station, with Al Kipp as GM, until it was sold to Painesville businesman Don Smith in the early 1980's. Clarence Bucaro of WERE, who had been a salesman at WBKC in the mid-'70's, became GM.
When Don smith bought 1460 in Painesville in 1986, he sold 1560 to his son-in-law. The WBKC calls were moved to Painesville and 1560 took the call sign WCDN, as in Chardon.
When Warren Jones bought 1560, he changed the calls to WATJ, after him and his son, Ted. Those were the last calls the station had. Jones turned the license back a couple years ago and FCC rules now prohibit the re-licensing of daytime stations, so the station is gone forever.
Reportedly, there are luxury condos on the Aquilla Road land where the towers and studios once stood. But at least the call letters finally made it to the big city!
So 1460 in Painesville is the new WABQ?
How many of WABQ's old audience in Cleveland can actually hear it? I can't get it in Beachwood.
At what time of the morning does 1540 sign on? I tuned in at 7:30 AM and all I heard was KXEL.
I wonder if Craig Karmazin will buy KXEL and reduce its power so that WABQ could broadcast at night. Sounds a little crazy, but there is a precedent: The owners of WLIB in New York actually did that with nighttime competitor WOWO in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
(quote) > "...so that WABQ could broadcast at night."
I meant, of course, the station formerly known as WABQ.
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