Another Small Radio Change

Clear Channel hot AC WKDD/98.1 has won FCC approval to change its city of license from Canton to the Akron suburb of Munroe Falls.

The change was part of a construction permit the FCC granted on October 29th - last Wednesday.

For the near term, at least, it means nothing other than a different city being heard on WKDD's legal ID.

The construction permit specifies WKDD's existing facilities - a 50,000 watt class B outlet located in Hartville. It's the same transmitter site the station built shortly after the Great Frequency Swap of 2001 - after finding out that the previous WHK-FM site near Louisville just wasn't doing the job of reaching much of the Akron market.

WKDD's studios are, and will remain, at the Clear Channel World Domination HQ/Southern Command on Freedom Avenue in Stark County's Jackson Township.

And the station is still notified as part of the Akron market.

Presumably, the change from Canton to Munroe Falls could eventually allow WKDD to nudge the 98.1 signal somewhere else (say, closer to Akron), though it doesn't change the various other considerable technical considerations that would limit any such move...among them, a powerful second-adjacent Cleveland signal in CBS Radio's WNCX/98.5, not to mention a third-adjacent signal right in Akron - Rubber City Radio's WONE/97.5.

But it at least on digital paper, "plants the flag" of WKDD back into the Akron market, some 7 years after the station's format and intellectual property moved off its long-time Akron home of 96.5 to make way for top 40 WAKS "Kiss FM"...