Wednesday, October 18, 2006

Here Comes Columbus' Newest Radio Station

While we were looking for Other Things in FCC data, we stumbled upon the now-approved construction permit for WHIZ-FM/102.5 Zanesville to move to Baltimore.

Baltimore as in the small town in Central Ohio, that is, not the more famous one in Maryland.

The FCC gave its blessing to the facilities on October 2nd. The move drags the Zanesville FM clear into the Columbus market, with a proposed transmitter site in northwest Fairfield County, just west of that new COL.

It looks like the 11KW newly-rechristened class B1 station will be one of the better rimshots into Columbus. It isn't quite the full class B move-in that became WLZT/93.3 Ashville, but it looks to have a better signal than a lot of the other suburban-COL'ed rimshots in the Columbus market.

Since WHIZ-FM is now owned by Southeastern Ohio Broadcasting System, the hometown operation which also runs sister WHIZ/1240 and NBC affiliate WHIZ-TV/18, it appears somewhat likely that they'll sell the newly moved FM to a company looking for a new Columbus FM signal...

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

OMW, did you see that Roger Brown has an article in Scene Magazine this week?

http://www.clevescene.com/Issues/2006-10-18/news/news2.html

Anonymous said...

Mind-numbing quote of the year, in Rog's Scene article:

SportsTime Ohio has purchased new desk chairs. STO President Jim Liberatore says the old chairs "just didn't swivel."

Just let that sink in...

- Nathan Obral

Anonymous said...

Ouch. Sell? Can you say Salem?

Anonymous said...

Ive heard salem has wanted an FM in the Columbus market for a while...

102.5 The Fish? that would do them justice specially since they didnt get any of the CBS stations.... or could Radio One or North American try to gobble it up?

Anonymous said...

This is certainly a "sell." WHIZ Media Group will likely then turn its attention and cash toward either purchasing another local radio station for its FM side (I can't see them NOT having one) or perhaps try to start another one. I don't think that the WHIZ Media Group management and staff is prepared to compete in the Columbus market, and the downgraded signal will not reach back to the Zanesville market.

Possibilities include WYBZ (oldies format at 107.3 with a broadcast tower near Crooksville but its studio on the city's south end) or perhaps the Christian station (92.7), which has its studio and tower not far from the current WHIZ bunker.

It's been remarkable how unreported this has been in the local general media.

Len LaCara said...

Better late than never.

Thanks for the tip.