WTWS
Encyclopedia
WTWS, known as 92.1 The Twister, is a 920-watt radio station broadcasting at 92.1 FM
in Houghton Lake, MI, with a country music
format.
Formerly licensed to Harrison, Michigan
and operated as a satellite of public radio station WVXU
Cincinnati for several years and owned by Xavier University
(then transferred to Cincinnati Classical Public Radio along with WVXU), the station was recently taken over by John Salov, owner of WUPS
98.5 Houghton Lake, Michigan
, and adopted the "Twister" format in June 2006.
If WKKM was legendary for anything, it was their low budget presentation. The station used basic voice production instead of jingles. As radio stations started tossing out vinyl
in the 1980s for CDs, WKKM didn't fully make the conversion. In the early 1990s, WKKM became almost exclusively a classic country
format when record companies decided to stop shipping out records to radio stations; the station instead relied its vast library of 45s.
One of the most obvious indications of WKKM's thiftiness was the fact that during its 27 years on the air, it never broadcast in stereo
. According to Carmine, most of the records were in mono
as it was, so why bother spending thousands of dollars to convert the station to stereo? Also, Carmine nicknamed the station "The Best Radio Station Radio Shack
Ever Built", since it's rumored that parts and hardware for the station came from the electronics retailer.
WKKM was also a fertile training ground for up-and-coming radio talent. Recent graduates of Detroit's Specs Howard School of Media Arts often had their first jobs at WKKM straight out of school before moving on to bigger markets.
AM 1500, the call letters were taken from a legendary Detroit country station (The Big 'D'), and later given up. Carmine's WDEE, licensed to Reed City, the county seat of nearby Osceola County, and which had no radio station of its own, later became a tool for expanding WKKM's FM signal, which was weak and spotty in that particular area.
Mr. Carmine operated WDEE AM from local studios at 410 W. Upton Ave. (which was then the city of Reed City offices), with local programming for several years, until converting it to the WKKM simulcast in the mid 1980s. The station failed to make any kind of financial inroads for Carmine, and he ended up turning the station off in October 1992, selling WDEE in 1994 to Beilfuss Broadcasting. Beilfuss Broadcasting was a company headed by Cadillac-Traverse City area radio programmer Steve Masters, who operated the station with an oldies format until 1997, when he put WDEE-FM 97.3 on the air and moved his operations south of Reed City to Big Rapids. WDEE, with its weak signal of 250 watts at a high dial position, barely made it ten miles outside its tower, and while off to a good start for Masters, it barely broke even financially. It continued as a simulcast outlet of its FM sister until 2001 when it began a short lived automated classic country format. Masters finally shut it off for good in 2002.
In 1985, Carmine started another AM simulcast for WKKM, WWKM 1540. The station couldn't come at a worse time since AM radio in northern Michigan was good as dead during that period of time. It's well-known that WWKM was a waste of money for Carmine, especially since its 1,000-watt daytime only signal only had a roughly 10-mile radius.
During the time that both AM stations were simulcasting WKKM-FM, the positioner/ID voiceover used was "The Mighty 92, WKKM/WWKM FM/AM Harrison, WDEE Reed City". Also heard was "The Country King, WKKM plays more music!" Both were simple voice-over announcements, lacking any sort of jingle packing.
Around 2000, the station had two full-time DJs: Ed Thomas
(6 a.m.-1 p.m.) and M. A. Hanson (1-7 p.m.) with a simulcast of Saginaw's WKCQ
98.1 overnights. Up until the simulcast, the station was on the air for only 16 hours a day, signing on at 6:00 AM and signing off at 10:00PM (which was then the FCC minimum standard for commercial FM broadcast hours). The station had a news director, Charlie Cobb. WKKM had a full-service feel to it, as the station had religious programming all day Sunday, plus funeral announcements and Paul Harvey
News and Comment. In 2001, the station ditched its WKCQ rebroadcast and played pre-recorded music all night.
Carmine wanted to retire and sold WKKM to Xavier University
in 2002 for $270,000. Under the deal, WKKM became a public radio station, WVXH, and simulcast Xavier's X-Star Radio Network, fed from WVXU
Cincinnati. Xavier also owned two other stations in northern Michigan: WVXA 96.7 Rogers City, MI (now WRGZ) and WVXM 97.7 Manistee, MI (now WMLQ).
(FCC), silencing WWKM 1540 forever in 2004.
WKKM was silenced on June 30, 2002 and brought back on as WVXH on July 18. Xavier did extensive work on the station, adding much-needed new equipment. For the first time ever, the station broadcast in stereo. WVXH broadcast X-Star's programs, which included old radio shows, adult standards
, jazz
, blues
and even a rock
show Saturday nights.
However, the X-Star Network crumbled. In March 2005, Xavier sold X-Star to Cincinnati Classical Public Radio for $15 million. CCPR wasn't interested in broadcasting outside of Cincinnati, so they put all their stations—WVXH included— on the block. In August, X-Star ceased operations and all of their stations simulcast WVXU full time.
The WWKM call letters were grabbed by WHYT, 88.1/89.1 Imlay City, in 2002 when it became available.
area, was granted a construction permit to change its city of license to Harrison (with no change in facilities), WTWS received a construction permit to move to Houghton Lake in order that there would still be a radio station licensed to Houghton Lake. From the new facilities, 92.1 FM's signal in the southern part of its former 6,000-watt coverage area, such as Mount Pleasant and Clare, is significantly less strong, but the station can now be heard more clearly in former fringe coverage areas such as Houghton Lake, Higgins Lake, West Branch, St. Helen, and Roscommon, and northward to Grayling. However, a translator station on the same frequency in Gaylord (rebroadcasting Catholic station WTCK
in Charlevoix
) makes reception more difficult farther north.
that had been using them. This frequency was noted on the air in January 2011 with classic country music in mono, reminiscent of the original WKKM. The licensee is listed as "The Country King, Incorporated" in the FCC database. WKKM was granted its license to cover on August 9, 2011. However, the station's 100-watt signal barely makes it out of the Harrison area and does not even reach Clare, giving WKKM a significantly truncated coverage area compared to the old 92.1 signal.
FM broadcasting
FM broadcasting is a broadcasting technology pioneered by Edwin Howard Armstrong which uses frequency modulation to provide high-fidelity sound over broadcast radio. The term "FM band" describes the "frequency band in which FM is used for broadcasting"...
in Houghton Lake, MI, with a country music
Country music
Country music is a popular American musical style that began in the rural Southern United States in the 1920s. It takes its roots from Western cowboy and folk music...
format.
Formerly licensed to Harrison, Michigan
Harrison, Michigan
Harrison is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan. As of the 2000 census, the city population was 2,108. It is the county seat of Clare County.The city is named after U.S. President William Henry Harrison....
and operated as a satellite of public radio station WVXU
WVXU
WVXU is a public radio station located in Cincinnati, Ohio. It is owned by Cincinnati Public Radio, which also operates station WGUC and WMUB. It broadcasts at 91.7 FM and airs public radio news/talk syndicated programming from National Public Radio, American Public Media and Public Radio...
Cincinnati for several years and owned by Xavier University
Xavier University (Cincinnati)
Xavier University is a co-educational Jesuit university in the United States located in Cincinnati, Ohio. The University is the sixth-oldest Catholic university in the nation and has an undergraduate enrollment of about 4,000 students and graduate enrollment of 2,600 students. Xavier is primarily...
(then transferred to Cincinnati Classical Public Radio along with WVXU), the station was recently taken over by John Salov, owner of WUPS
WUPS
WUPS is a 100 kW radio station broadcasting at 98.5 licensed to Harrison, Michigan and serving central and northern Michigan, with its chief focus on the Mount Pleasant area. The station is owned by John Salov and broadcasts a classic hits format....
98.5 Houghton Lake, Michigan
Houghton Lake, Michigan
Houghton Lake is an unincorporated community in Roscommon Township, Roscommon County in the U.S. state of Michigan. The Census Bureau has defined a census-designated place for statistical purposes with the same name. The population was 3,749 at the 2000 census.The community is situated on the...
, and adopted the "Twister" format in June 2006.
Early years as WKKM
For most of its years, WTWS was known as WKKM, "King of Kountry Music", "The Kountry King" and "The Mighty 92". The station signed on in March 1975 by David Carmine (aka Dave Carr to radio audiences), a former Detroit country radio personality and author of Rockin' Down the Dial, a book about the history of Top 40 rock and roll radio in the Motor City. For its first few years, WKKM broadcast from a trailer, then from its transmitter building. Eventually the station's studios and offices were moved to downtown Harrison.If WKKM was legendary for anything, it was their low budget presentation. The station used basic voice production instead of jingles. As radio stations started tossing out vinyl
Gramophone record
A gramophone record, commonly known as a phonograph record , vinyl record , or colloquially, a record, is an analog sound storage medium consisting of a flat disc with an inscribed, modulated spiral groove...
in the 1980s for CDs, WKKM didn't fully make the conversion. In the early 1990s, WKKM became almost exclusively a classic country
Classic country
Classic country is a music radio format that specializes in playing mainstream country hits from past decades.This genre generally follows one of two formats: those specializing in hits from the 1920s through the early 1970s, and focus primarily on innovators and artists from country music's Golden...
format when record companies decided to stop shipping out records to radio stations; the station instead relied its vast library of 45s.
One of the most obvious indications of WKKM's thiftiness was the fact that during its 27 years on the air, it never broadcast in stereo
STEREO
STEREO is a solar observation mission. Two nearly identical spacecraft were launched into orbits that cause them to respectively pull farther ahead of and fall gradually behind the Earth...
. According to Carmine, most of the records were in mono
Monaural
Monaural or monophonic sound reproduction is single-channel. Typically there is only one microphone, one loudspeaker, or channels are fed from a common signal path...
as it was, so why bother spending thousands of dollars to convert the station to stereo? Also, Carmine nicknamed the station "The Best Radio Station Radio Shack
Radio shack
Radio shack is a slang term for a room or structure for housing radio equipment.-History:In the early days of radio, equipment was experimental and home-built. The first radio transmitters used a noisy spark to generate radio waves and were often housed in a garage or shed. When radio was first...
Ever Built", since it's rumored that parts and hardware for the station came from the electronics retailer.
WKKM was also a fertile training ground for up-and-coming radio talent. Recent graduates of Detroit's Specs Howard School of Media Arts often had their first jobs at WKKM straight out of school before moving on to bigger markets.
Sister stations: WDEE and WWKM
In 1981, Carmine started what would later become an AM simulcast for WKKM, known as WDEEWDEE-FM
WDEE-FM is a radio station licensed to Reed City, Michigan, with studios in Big Rapids. The station plays oldies of the 1950s through the 1980s.-Beginnings as WDEE-AM:...
AM 1500, the call letters were taken from a legendary Detroit country station (The Big 'D'), and later given up. Carmine's WDEE, licensed to Reed City, the county seat of nearby Osceola County, and which had no radio station of its own, later became a tool for expanding WKKM's FM signal, which was weak and spotty in that particular area.
Mr. Carmine operated WDEE AM from local studios at 410 W. Upton Ave. (which was then the city of Reed City offices), with local programming for several years, until converting it to the WKKM simulcast in the mid 1980s. The station failed to make any kind of financial inroads for Carmine, and he ended up turning the station off in October 1992, selling WDEE in 1994 to Beilfuss Broadcasting. Beilfuss Broadcasting was a company headed by Cadillac-Traverse City area radio programmer Steve Masters, who operated the station with an oldies format until 1997, when he put WDEE-FM 97.3 on the air and moved his operations south of Reed City to Big Rapids. WDEE, with its weak signal of 250 watts at a high dial position, barely made it ten miles outside its tower, and while off to a good start for Masters, it barely broke even financially. It continued as a simulcast outlet of its FM sister until 2001 when it began a short lived automated classic country format. Masters finally shut it off for good in 2002.
In 1985, Carmine started another AM simulcast for WKKM, WWKM 1540. The station couldn't come at a worse time since AM radio in northern Michigan was good as dead during that period of time. It's well-known that WWKM was a waste of money for Carmine, especially since its 1,000-watt daytime only signal only had a roughly 10-mile radius.
During the time that both AM stations were simulcasting WKKM-FM, the positioner/ID voiceover used was "The Mighty 92, WKKM/WWKM FM/AM Harrison, WDEE Reed City". Also heard was "The Country King, WKKM plays more music!" Both were simple voice-over announcements, lacking any sort of jingle packing.
Around 2000, the station had two full-time DJs: Ed Thomas
Ed Thomas
Ed Thomas was the high school football coach for Aplington-Parkersburg High School in Parkersburg, Iowa. On June 24, 2009, Thomas was shot and killed in the football team's weight room. Ed Thomas's killer is Mark Becker, a 2004 Aplington-Parkersburg graduate and one of Thomas' former players...
(6 a.m.-1 p.m.) and M. A. Hanson (1-7 p.m.) with a simulcast of Saginaw's WKCQ
WKCQ
WKCQ is a radio station licensed to Saginaw, Michigan. The station has broadcast a popular country music format since 1968 . Every year since 1993, the station hosts a free concert on Ojibway Island in downtown Saginaw.- Sources :*...
98.1 overnights. Up until the simulcast, the station was on the air for only 16 hours a day, signing on at 6:00 AM and signing off at 10:00PM (which was then the FCC minimum standard for commercial FM broadcast hours). The station had a news director, Charlie Cobb. WKKM had a full-service feel to it, as the station had religious programming all day Sunday, plus funeral announcements and Paul Harvey
Paul Harvey
Paul Harvey Aurandt , better known as Paul Harvey, was an American radio broadcaster for the ABC Radio Networks. He broadcast News and Comment on weekday mornings and mid-days, and at noon on Saturdays, as well as his famous The Rest of the Story segments. His listening audience was estimated, at...
News and Comment. In 2001, the station ditched its WKCQ rebroadcast and played pre-recorded music all night.
Carmine wanted to retire and sold WKKM to Xavier University
Xavier University (Cincinnati)
Xavier University is a co-educational Jesuit university in the United States located in Cincinnati, Ohio. The University is the sixth-oldest Catholic university in the nation and has an undergraduate enrollment of about 4,000 students and graduate enrollment of 2,600 students. Xavier is primarily...
in 2002 for $270,000. Under the deal, WKKM became a public radio station, WVXH, and simulcast Xavier's X-Star Radio Network, fed from WVXU
WVXU
WVXU is a public radio station located in Cincinnati, Ohio. It is owned by Cincinnati Public Radio, which also operates station WGUC and WMUB. It broadcasts at 91.7 FM and airs public radio news/talk syndicated programming from National Public Radio, American Public Media and Public Radio...
Cincinnati. Xavier also owned two other stations in northern Michigan: WVXA 96.7 Rogers City, MI (now WRGZ) and WVXM 97.7 Manistee, MI (now WMLQ).
WKKM: Another try at AM
WWKM, however, was split off as Laurie Foster, Xavier's manager of northern Michigan stations, bought the station from Carmine for only $10. Foster acquired the WKKM call letters, put them on 1540, and made the station automated classic country. However, the station didn't make a profit and Foster sent the license back to the Federal Communications CommissionFederal Communications Commission
The Federal Communications Commission is an independent agency of the United States government, created, Congressional statute , and with the majority of its commissioners appointed by the current President. The FCC works towards six goals in the areas of broadband, competition, the spectrum, the...
(FCC), silencing WWKM 1540 forever in 2004.
WKKM was silenced on June 30, 2002 and brought back on as WVXH on July 18. Xavier did extensive work on the station, adding much-needed new equipment. For the first time ever, the station broadcast in stereo. WVXH broadcast X-Star's programs, which included old radio shows, adult standards
Adult standards
Adult standards is a North American radio format heard primarily on AM or class A FM stations.Adult standards is aimed at "mature" adults, meaning mainly those persons over 50 years of age, but it is mostly targeted for senior citizens...
, jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
, blues
Blues
Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...
and even a rock
Rock music
Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music...
show Saturday nights.
However, the X-Star Network crumbled. In March 2005, Xavier sold X-Star to Cincinnati Classical Public Radio for $15 million. CCPR wasn't interested in broadcasting outside of Cincinnati, so they put all their stations—WVXH included— on the block. In August, X-Star ceased operations and all of their stations simulcast WVXU full time.
Country music returns under a new name
In March 2006, it was announced that John Salov—owner of WUPS 98.5 Houghton Lake — was buying WVXH for $200,000, a $70,000 loss for Xavier/CCPR. Although 92.1 is once again a country-music station, it now plays contemporary hit country.The WWKM call letters were grabbed by WHYT, 88.1/89.1 Imlay City, in 2002 when it became available.
Move to Houghton Lake
As of October, 2008, WTWS is broadcasting from new facilities licensed to Houghton Lake, with a power of 920 watts. After sister station WUPS, which primarily targets the Mount PleasantMount Pleasant, Michigan
Mount Pleasant is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan and the county seat of Isabella County. As of the 2000 census, the city population was 25,946. The 2008 census estimate places the population at 26,675....
area, was granted a construction permit to change its city of license to Harrison (with no change in facilities), WTWS received a construction permit to move to Houghton Lake in order that there would still be a radio station licensed to Houghton Lake. From the new facilities, 92.1 FM's signal in the southern part of its former 6,000-watt coverage area, such as Mount Pleasant and Clare, is significantly less strong, but the station can now be heard more clearly in former fringe coverage areas such as Houghton Lake, Higgins Lake, West Branch, St. Helen, and Roscommon, and northward to Grayling. However, a translator station on the same frequency in Gaylord (rebroadcasting Catholic station WTCK
WTCK
WTCK is a radio station broadcasting a Catholic religious format, simulcasting WDEO of Ypsilanti, Michigan. Licensed to Charlevoix, Michigan USA, the station is currently owned by Baraga Broadcasting.WTCK programming is also heard in St...
in Charlevoix
Charlevoix, Michigan
Charlevoix is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan. As of the 2000 census, the city population was 2,994. It is the county seat of Charlevoix County....
) makes reception more difficult farther north.
WKKM Returns at 90.7
In 2008, a new 100-watt FM facility at 90.7 licensed to Harrison was granted the WKKM call letters after they were dropped by an Alpena-area contemporary Christian stationWSFP
WSFP is a non-commercial, contemporary Christian FM radio station licensed to the Alpena, Michigan area. The station broadcasts at 88.5 MHz, and is owned by Superior Communications. WSFP simulcasts the Smile FM Praise contemporary Christian music format....
that had been using them. This frequency was noted on the air in January 2011 with classic country music in mono, reminiscent of the original WKKM. The licensee is listed as "The Country King, Incorporated" in the FCC database. WKKM was granted its license to cover on August 9, 2011. However, the station's 100-watt signal barely makes it out of the Harrison area and does not even reach Clare, giving WKKM a significantly truncated coverage area compared to the old 92.1 signal.