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WCLB - Silent?

I

IKHNetworks

Whatever happened to AM 950 and 107.3

The Call letters are WCLB 950 AM and 107.3 W297CK

The website, app, and internet stream is no longer present. More concerning their over the air signal is gone.

At one point it appears that both stations both the AM and FM side that is completely off the air. By off the air - I mean completely off the air a faint signal from WSJY and a station in Detroit on 950 AM WWJ

They were there at lower power a couple weeks ago but now there’s nothing at all.
 
Just checked; both 950 and 107.3 are back up now simulcasting WGXI 1420/98.5 out of Plymouth, though it's not reflected on-air so it may have been a panic for programming of any kind (I have a FB question up on the WGXI page now). It has been five years since their Martini Media programming deal started, so it may have either expired, MM no longer exists, or Randy Hopper is in panic mode and selling off things (he moved out of the old KFIZ facility into a small box of a building along Main St. in Fondy a couple years ago).

ETA - TOTH now reflects WCLB in the simulcast and the station's RDS finally switched from the Z-107 playlist in the last few minutes.
 
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Back in the 1970s, WCLB, then WKTS, had a remarkably interference free signal in West Central Michigan. With my short vertical and preamp, it could be heard alone without WWJ or WAAF...WNTD interference. I attribute that to the pattern beamed East and the conductivity of Lake Michigan being greater than M-3, as we have discussed.
 
I cannot speak from a perspective of personal knowledge but I worked a station that leased it's airtime.

Generally when a lease goes south on you, you are not even close to being prepared. The 90 day notice clause is a joke because a programmer going broke won't say it's done until the bank account runs dry. A few days is the best you can hope for. And you do not have a back-up. Any back up contingency might be very outdated by a few years.

When a client leaves after years on air it is a good time to make any repairs or maintenance that might take a few days. Anything that makes your signal the best it can be for the next client. New clients are not easy to find.

Small facilities is where we are. Jocks can work from home as can sales people and traffic. You simply don't need much these days and the studio requirement is gone.
 
Even if we never found out any details about what agreements to come to they managed to get WGXI to fix a number of issues for WCLB's transmitter through the summer; going into last winter I could barely 950 right near the site, but now it's a lot clearer, it's audible in Sheboygan and you're no longer hearing any of the consistent dead air periods you did when their IP connection from Martini in Oshkosh dropped out.

Hopefully they can come to some agreement to get the translator on the Midwest antennas, because that signal could be a lot better.
 
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