Kind of like WKTU Lake Success- New York. No one can understand the Lake Success-part.
I remember them doing that as WTFM 103.5 in Lake Success (boy am I old) they were a "beautiful music" station then, and when I heard Lake Success, I thought that it was a scenic lake somewhere upstate, lo and behold it's part of New York City (Queens) why did the FCC grant them that designation instead on NYC (beats me)
One more oddity about WKTU, they were originally at 92.3 and they I.D. New York City, they moved to 103.5, took that frequency and I guess they had to keep the Lake Success moniker (who knows?)
Just want to try to clear up this confusion, and apologies in advance for this long ramble on the L.A. board about some NYC history.
WTFM, back in the 50's, was WGLI-FM/103.5, co-owned with WGLI and allocated to one of the communities in western Suffolk County on Long Island. (Maybe Babylon, or Huntington, can't remember at this moment.) The owner of a chain of appliance stores, Friendly Frost, bought the FM station and wanted to relocate it closer to New York City. But unlike with AM's, an FM frequency first has to be allocated by the FCC to a "community of license" (COL) before it can be licensed there.
New York City itself already had its maximum number of allocations, so Friendly Frost did a search to find a COL closer to the city that didn't already have any allocations, since it was easier to get approval for a COL without any previous allocations. And they found the Village of Lake Success in northwestern Nassau County, just outside Queens, and petitioned the FCC to change WGLI-FM's allocation to there. Once approved, the actual, physical station was relocated to Fresh Meadows section of Queens, adjacent to the infamous Long Island Expressway. The station was co-located into a building with a restaurant (names, of all things, the Broadcasters Inn), and a tower was constructed adjacent to the station. The calls were rebranded WTFM, and it ran a Beautiful Music format. (Which, to my knowledge, was programmed in house, not using Schulke, which already was airing on WPAT, or Bonneville, which was on WRFM.)
Eventually their license was modified for a directional antenna, and they relocated the transmitter to the Chrysler Building in Manhattan, shooting the bulk of their signal east towards Queens, the Bronx, Nassau, southern Westchester and the southwest corner of Connecticut. (This was to avoid interfering with a handful of co-located and adjacent frequency stations in New Jersey.)
In the early 80's, Friendly Frost sold WTFM to Doubleday Broadcasting, which tried a rock format which didn't gain traction against WNEW-FM. They tried something else (CHR?), which also wasn't successful against Z-100 and WPLJ. Eventually they threw in the towel and sold out to a company (Chancellor?) that got merged, and merged again, until it was owned by the entity Clear Channel, which became iHeart a decade or so back.
Also in the 70's, WHOM-FM/92.3 (owned by San Juan Racing Company in Puerto Rico and totally separate from the above) changed their calls to WKTU. They initially tried a "mellow rock" format, which got modest ratings. After a couple of years, someone had the idea to try an all-disco format, which caught fire big time. It was the all-disco format that knocked WABC off its perch (#1 to #11 in one book) and sent them into a panic. (Less well remembered, it also did damage to WBLS, also a top station in that era.) But despite the damage it did to WABC, the disco craze faded, and eventually (my code word for "I don't recall the exact chronology") WKTU was purchased by Mel Karmazin's new Infinity Broadcasting, which launched a rock format (changing the calls to WXRK, "K-Rock", and eventually hiring Howard Stern after he was fired by WNBC). Infinity eventually got merged into Westinghouse Broadcasting, which also eventually acquired the CBS Corporation, which combined all their radio stations under the "Infinity" umbrella. That is the station that, after changes upon changes, recently became the FM simulcast for 1010 WINS.
In the meantime, we jump to the mid 1990's. 103.5's been through format-of-the-year hell for a decade, and management decides to try a rhythmic/dance-intensive format, and grabs the WKTU call letters, which were unassigned at that time. It launches, and has a fair amount of success. To this day, 103.5 remains WKTU, even though the musical focus - perhaps the whole format - has evolved over the intervening years. So, if you've followed along this far, the takeaway from this long essay is that the 1970's/80's WKTU on 92.3 is a completely different, unrelated animal from the 1990's-2000's WKTU on 103.5.
This will be covered in the midterm exam next week.
