I've probably asked these questions before. If so, please excuse my old age. Does the Herrin radio station have the call letters, WJPF? Does it still do local high school play-by-play of basketball games? It used to carry SIU play-by-play when Ron Hines was the GM; does it still do SIU sports live? And is the station still part of the St. Louis Cardinals baseball network? Thanks.
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Herrin AM station
- Thread starter MightyFrenchman
- Start date
MightyFrenchman said:I've probably asked these questions before. If so, please excuse my old age. Does the Herrin radio station have the call letters, WJPF? Does it still do local high school play-by-play of basketball games? It used to carry SIU play-by-play when Ron Hines was the GM; does it still do SIU sports live? And is the station still part of the St. Louis Cardinals baseball network? Thanks.
It still has the call letters, per www.radio-locator.com...
http://www.radio-locator.com/cgi-bin/finder?sr=Y&s=C&call=wjpf&x=0&y=0
Per their website, they still do Cards and Salukis.
http://www.wjpf.com/home.php
For awhile in the late 70's and into the 80's the calls were changed to 'Whoopie Country'/13-40/WHPI....Zimmer and now the bigger group Zimmer went into (sell) has it simulcasting (mostly) with 1020/WCIL and they are very successful in the ARB's with news/talk/sports...
When I left the station in March 1977, the call letters had just been changed to WHPI. Whoopie radio. However, it still had an A/C format. Did it switch to country before going all news/talk/sports?
skippertthomas said:For awhile in the late 70's and into the 80's the calls were changed to 'Whoopie Country'/13-40/WHPI....Zimmer and now the bigger group Zimmer went into (sell) has it simulcasting (mostly) with 1020/WCIL and they are very successful in the ARB's with news/talk/sports...
Yep, it sure did... Was very popular in the waining music days of AM and in the first book ever done for what is now the four county metro, it had almost as much share as WTAO-FM did and was the top rated AM in the Jackson/Williamson/Franklin/Perry market... ('CIL-FM and 'DDD were monsters then)....
Okay, next month (March) it'll have been 30 years since I lived in Southern Illinois. Even so, it still sounds weird for radio people from that area to talk about the ratings. It was a typical small market in that advertising was based on an established station/advertiser relationship and (gasp) if the advertising worked or not. Of the ad dollars spent in the WJPF/WCIL/WTAO area, what percentage of it is placed by agencies based on ratings?
JoeyH said:Skip, it still has almost as much share as TAO...5.3 vs 4.7 12+ Fall 06. In the spring it was the 5th highest rated station in the market, beating even CIL-FM.
When the McRoys with the urging of Lyle, Chelewski, & Waitekus bought a special four county self-made metro book, it changed this smaller market.. I was able to sell many outline communities and businesses and regional companies 'CIL-FM, based of the killer numbers.. We, at that time were not too expensive, based on CPM (cost per thousand).... We had mom and pops buying our specialty shows like AT-40, Soundtrack of the 60's and Tony's Atomic Oldies Show (I was his more than willing fill in on that one)... I remember Sonic was getting off the ground and wouldn't consider us until I threw a copy of our book and the numbers.. They went Ga-Ga... (27 share and next was 'DDD' with like a 15 and 'TAO with a 10)... The next year ('81) we did the new county by county and it showed our strength in the fringe.. Thus, ARB decided to make it a full numbered market for ratings (by the time I went to KINT-98 in El Paso)....Al Lentine and I had an increadable 49 share in the 7 to 12 evening daypart (out of about 15 stations showing in the book)...We had 149k (12+) in the four counties, compared to about 140k (12+) in that market, now.. I think our cume reach was 49% of that 149k population... Random rounded estimates and not exact copywrited numbers...
Wow, I had no idea that WCIL-FM ever got those kinds of numbers. When I first arrived in C'dale in 1972 as an RT student at SIU, the "towers" and other dorms on the east side of the IC tracks, plus the Student Center, all had the carrier current station WIDB piping through. And it was a very good station. At the Thompson Point dorms' cafeteria, WTAO was piped in.
Through the mid 70s it seemed like the two most popular FM stations were WTAO for college-age people and WDDD because of the country music format. But WCIL-FM? No way. That shows that nothing necessarily stays the same in radio.
Through the mid 70s it seemed like the two most popular FM stations were WTAO for college-age people and WDDD because of the country music format. But WCIL-FM? No way. That shows that nothing necessarily stays the same in radio.
Preception was a major part of 'TAO and their ability to sell ads.. Once you got outside of C'dale, proper, they were down the food chain and their original Class "A" signal was poor in parts of Marion and Herrin, as well as Franklin County... 'CIL-FM went full fledged CHR/Top-40 in 1976 and parlayed on the region... Zurick, Waitekus, Chelewski, Lyle, Duckworth, Thavieu, Strom in news and other strong RT-grads and students ruled the region.. Earl Jive and I used to drink quarter beers after his shift and before mine (he at 'TAO and me at 'CIL-FM)... He was the bomb with the guys, but he'd joked that his black book had three to five girls numbers at any time, while I was purchasing new volumes to hold all the names of the females that listened to me in the early evenings at 'CIL-FM... Also, remember, Country was not at its mass appeal peak at that time.... POP was still king with most 18 to 45 year olds and we had the oldies show on Sunday, when there was no Oldies format in the area.... My frat bros even knew a good thing.. Get the "Jam Van" for a dance and the ladies were sure to come to the frat house in droves.... ;D
And this was a time period of change for AM/FM radio everywhere during the late 70s. In 1976 my car and the cars of most people I knew only had an AM radio in them. By 1978 when I bought a new Chevrolet Chevette, an AM/FM radio came as standard equipment. We sensed that FM would one day overtake AM radio but I think that when the automakers started installing FM as standard equipment it hastened the day when AM would start its downward trend. If/when the day arrives that the automakers start installing either satellite radio or WI-FI as standard equipment in nearly all vehicles, traditional radio is going to have a tough time. If HD radios become standard equipement, radio still has a chance. Keep chugging, WJPF, WCIL-AM, WGGH, WDQN and other Southern Illinois AM stations.
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