WKDD Heading To Bellaire Lane

Clear Channel Akron market hot AC WKDD/98.1 is about ready to return, physically, to the Akron market.

The once-Canton licensed facility, now licensed to the Akron suburb of Munroe Falls, got FCC approval this week to locate its transmitter facility at Bellaire Lane in Cuyahoga Falls...at the very same spot WKDD occupied for many years with its original 96.5 antenna.

If you're a regular OMW reader, you know "the rest of the story", as a certain late iconic radio news commentator would have said.

In the Great Cleveland Frequency Swap of 2001, Clear Channel moved WKDD/96.5's transmitter site north into Brecksville - pairing it with the WAKS "Kiss FM" top 40 format which had resided on 104.9/Lorain (now classical WCLV).

The WKDD format and intellectual property ended up on the 98.1/Canton facility (formerly religious WHK-FM, acquired from Salem). Clear Channel then nudged 98.1's site north into Hartville after the original signal (near Louisville) ended up doing a poor job of penetrating Akron office buildings.

The Munroe Falls COL for WKDD allowed it - with some squeezing, engineering wise - to physically move one more time to the Bellaire Lane facility WKDD once occupied as 96.5. (And we mean some squeezing...98.1 is squeezed to within an inch of its electronic life between Rubber City Radio rock WONE/97.5 Akron and CBS Radio classic rock WNCX/98.5 Cleveland.)

The approval of the 98.1 move being so recent, OMW hasn't yet heard when the folks at Clear Channel World Domination HQ Southern Command on Freedom Avenue intend to make it official.

But our long-time friend, colleague and World Champion Tower Hunter Scott Fybush at NorthEast Radio Watch estimates that typically. a move like this should take about a couple of months.

Though Clear Channel had to file for some modifications to it earlier this year, 98.1 will land on the already existing tower that was built somewhere around 1976 to hold the antenna of WKDD's historic frequency, 96.5...