1270 Wuco format change

[Radioma18]

They changed to the True oldies channel. It looks like they couldn’t get true oldies on wdlr so they went with 1270.

1550wdlr.com

 

[xmusicmatt]

They changed to the True oldies channel. It looks like they couldn’t get true oldies on wdlr so they went with 1270.

1550wdlr.com

WUCO 1270 running True Oldies? doesn't ST. GABRIEL RADIO, INC. still own the license? that's what the FCC site says!

 

[Radioma18]

I found a old article from the Marysville Journal-Tribune.
WUCO may be changing ownership
June 23, 2009 at 7:54 am
By MAC CORDELL

[EDIT]

For full Story see the June 22nd edition of the Marysville Journal Tribune.
http://www.marysvillejt.com/web/index.php?sid=50&id=5206


[EDIT-quotation exceeds fair use standards.]

 

[CatFM]

The proposed buyer of WUCO is ICS, which is the owner of WDLR, so there is your connection. ICS also owns WVXG Mt. Gilead.

 

[gabigley1]

The proposed buyer of WUCO is ICS, which is the owner of WDLR, so there is your connection. ICS also owns WVXG Mt. Gilead.

I broke that format change by ICS about a year ago but it never happened because the Spanish group wanted to LMA WDLR 1550.

Thanks for the correction.. The article said ICS TeleCommutations was planing to purchase the station. A quick google search of ICS TeleCommutations yesterday proved ICS TeleCommutations wouldn't be interested in the WUCO. For the record, ICS HOLDINGS, INC.
is the official licensee listed with the with the FCC. It looks like St Gabriel Catholic Radio is renting out WUCO 1270 radio out to ICS HOLDINGS INC until/if they purchase the station.

It looks like they are able to sell the station now because they FINALLY have the transmitter site fixed. This took over two
to get their transmitter site fixed. They had to hire another Engineer to get the station fixed. This is the post from the WUCO GM on
the problems we noticed at their Marysville transmitter site a couple of years ago. This took ALMOST three years to fix. Here is the post
from the WUCO GM:

For some time now, it seems they've been running the night pattern during the day. They have been coming in this way for some time, and according to the patterns I've seen, they shouldn't even exist in Columbus during the day.

http://radio-locator.com/cgi-bin/pat?call=WUCO&service=AM&status=L&hours=D

Yes we are running on night pattern. It had been intermittent. We were having problems with the Potomic. We hired 2 different engineers to fix it. They both failed. We were able to get it to switch to day pattern but it would quit working after a few weeks. We bought a rebuilt unit from potomic to fix the problem but it isn't working now. We hired a new engineer to fix it. Unfortunaltely there is a short somewhere and now when we switch to day pattern the whole thing shorts out and we go off the air. I hired a 4th engineer to help the 3rd engineer thinking we could clean this up but he flew in and said it will take a long time to sort this out and we need to file a STA with the FCC asking for 6 months to rebuild. Which we are doing. The engineer wrote it up and sent it to our FCC attorney this weekend.

The problem we encountered with this station is that none of the other owners made any money on it (which is why we were able to buy it) so they didn't put any money into it. 2 of the former owners filed bankrupcy. We had to rewire the studio and the transmitter site. You would not believe the mess of wiring we had when we started. We were off the air at least once a week. We have been working night and day to get the station brought up to code. To make things worse we have a local owner of a tower that is reradiating our signal toward Columbus. We have begged and pleaded with him to detune the tower but he will not. We even offered to pay for the detuning so we could finish adjusting our array but he just refuses. We hired Jack Layton to come out and do field measurements and adjust the array but he said unless we detune Dave Moots' tower we are wasting our time. This is all going to the FCC in the next 30 days.

So to answer your question, the intermittant night pattern is not from lack of effort. We have spent 100's of man hours and 10's of thousands of dollars trying to fix it. We are willing to accept anyones help in this matter. So if any of you gentlemen in the know wants to give us a hand we would deeply appreciate it.
Chris

This is the request for an extension of their S.T.A. from the NEW WUCO Chief Operator, Greg M. Savoldi. It finally took the services of one of
the best radio engineers in the country to get their transmitter site fixed. Click here to view Mr. Savoldi request for an extension
https://licensing.fcc.gov/cdbs/CDBS...?appn=101301011&qnum=5330&copynum=1&exhcnum=2

It looks like St. Gabriel Catholic radio need the cash from the sale of WUCO 1270 so they can FINALLY purchase WVKO-AM 1580
They are renting the station from Bernard Radio at present. I didn't think St. Gabriel Catholic radio wanted to sell 1270 WUCO.

 

[xmusicmatt]

It looks like St. Gabriel Catholic radio need the cash from the sale of WUCO 1270 so they can FINALLY purchase WVKO-AM 1580
They are renting the station from Bernard Radio at present. I didn't think St. Gabriel Catholic radio wanted to sell 1270 WUCO.

Beyond purchasing WVKO finally... Don't they still got a few FM non com CP's in southern Ohio to build out?? Sounds like St. Gabriel has a big road ahead.

 

[talkers]

It looks like St. Gabriel Catholic radio need the cash from the sale of WUCO 1270 so they can FINALLY purchase WVKO-AM 1580
They are renting the station from Bernard Radio at present. I didn't think St. Gabriel Catholic radio wanted to sell 1270 WUCO.

Beyond purchasing WVKO finally... Don't they still got a few FM non com CP's in southern Ohio to build out?? Sounds like St. Gabriel has a big road ahead.

Yes that would be WEWH-FM out of Washington Court House...

http://www.fcc.gov/fcc-bin/fmq?list=0&facid=172458

The tower site is also WVNU-FM 97.5 out of Greenfield.

 

[gabigley1]

It looks like WVKO-AM 1580 is the ONLY station they have on the air for the moment. Even WFOT 89.5 in Mansfield is not on the air anymore as far as I can tell... It is now listed as a CP in the FCC database and not listed on the current St. Gabriel site: http://www.stgabrielradio.com/about/network.html
Here is a page from their old website on their network of radio stations: http://web.archive.org/web/20070814165632/www.stgabrielradio.com/about/network.html before before they LMAed WVKO-AM last December.

My point is they seem to be focusing on purchasing WVKO-AM at the present as this would be the flagship of their planed network of radio
stations. Then they may want to expand from there. That would make scene to me. THEY announced plans to purchase WVKO-AM from
Bernard Radio Ohio last November but haven't been able to raise the money to purchase WVKO-AM. That would explain why they are not
focused on putting the smaller stations on the air at this time. They are trying to hold onto WVKO-AM at the moment.

 

[xmusicmatt]

It looks like St. Gabriel Catholic radio need the cash from the sale of WUCO 1270 so they can FINALLY purchase WVKO-AM 1580
They are renting the station from Bernard Radio at present. I didn't think St. Gabriel Catholic radio wanted to sell 1270 WUCO.

Beyond purchasing WVKO finally... Don't they still got a few FM non com CP's in southern Ohio to build out?? Sounds like St. Gabriel has a big road ahead.

Yes that would be WEWH-FM out of Washington Court House...

http://www.fcc.gov/fcc-bin/fmq?list=0&facid=172458

The tower site is also WVNU-FM 97.5 out of Greenfield.

They also have WTJM down near Portsmouth that needs built (90.9 FM) http://cdbs.recnet.com/fmq.php?facid=172457&jaws=0

With WFOT in Mansfield looks like their using the Minor MOD CP as a reason to be off air (that gives them until 2012 to build that out)

 

[gabigley1]

The proposed buyer of WUCO is ICS, which is the owner of WDLR, so there is your connection. ICS also owns WVXG Mt. Gilead.

St Gab. Radio tell me they are LMA the station out to ICS Telecommunications until they purchase the station. The Owner of WDLR is
is ICS Holdings, Inc, according to the FCC listing. So, why are there conflicting names?

Also, I'm still surprised that are selling WUCO 1270. I thought they would want to keep it as a part of the network. Their priority seems to
be the purchase WVKO-AM at this time. The smaller stations in their proposed network of stations will have to wait until the economy gets better. They even pulled the plug on their Mansfield station, at least for the foreseeable future.

 

[OhioMediaWatch]

St Gab. Radio tell me they are LMA the station out to ICS Telecommunications until they purchase the station. The Owner of WDLR is
is ICS Holdings, Inc, according to the FCC listing. So, why are there conflicting names?

What's the conflict? "Telecommunications" vs. "Holdings"?

 

[Tri-State Media]

St Gab. Radio tell me they are LMA the station out to ICS Telecommunications until they purchase the station. The Owner of WDLR is
is ICS Holdings, Inc, according to the FCC listing. So, why are there conflicting names?

What's the conflict? "Telecommunications" vs. "Holdings"?

I would think there shouldn't be a conflict. It's a matter of who holds the license.

For example, here in the Cincy area - WXIX-TV 19/Newport's licensee is known as "WXIX License Subsidiary, LLC" - but they identify on air as being a Raycom Media station. Which is true - the aforementioned "WXIX License Subsidiary" is just a subsidiary WITHIN Raycom. In many cases, these companies create a separate group to hold the licenses. Raycom, however, owns all contracts and other assets.

I realize it's a TV example, not a radio one...but, you get the general idea.

 

[Rusty Blades]

Different companies (technically), same owner - Mark Litton. Without a doubt the shadiest operator around.

 

[CatFM]

Different companies (technically), same owner - Mark Litton. Without a doubt the shadiest operator around.

Based on what?

 

[jharmon]

I am totally perplexed why this radio station that is so insignificant in the Columbus market is getting so much attention. I just checked the latest ratings...invisible.

 

[CatFM]

Anyone been listening? I'll give them credit...at least they don't have dead air and run spots over music like WODB. What is interesting is that they refer to it as WQTT, which is odd since the FCC Database still shows them licensed as WUCO, and WQTT is shown as being available. Very strange...

 

[Rusty Blades]

Different companies (technically), same owner - Mark Litton. Without a doubt the shadiest operator around.

Based on what?

LOL - You're not from around here, are you? How much time do you have?

 

[CatFM]

Different companies (technically), same owner - Mark Litton. Without a doubt the shadiest operator around.

Based on what?

LOL - You're not from around here, are you? How much time do you have?

I have lived and worked in the market on and off. In fact, I worked for Mark in the early 90s and I didn't think he was a shady operator, and I have worked for some very shady operators in this business. If he has done anything since then that could be considered shady, I am not aware of it.

I must admit that the WQTT business has me wondering.

 

[CatFM]

This is pretty strange. If you check their website at www.qt1270.com, it redirects to 1550wdlr.com, but it shows the site for "WQTT 1270" in Marysville. The FCC still shows the call WQTT as being available.

So what do they ID as? Last night when I listened at a top of the hour...no ID at all.

 

[OhioMediaWatch]

They can call themselves "WQTT" as a station name/slogan all they want, as long as "WUCO Marysville" airs once an hour as a legal ID.

I remember the case of WHTO/Muncy PA (near Williamsport), which actually called itself "WHOT" for YEARS. Rumor had it that Youngstown's WHOT wasn't thrilled, but there's no overlap between the two signals. Williamsport is too far east for that. The PA station is now oldies WBZD/93.3.

http://www.wbzd.com/

So, either they intend on using "WQTT" as a non-legal ID station name, or they just haven't gotten a Round Tuit(tm) and filed for the calls yet. Not much mystery here.