Posted on 12/17/2012 7:01:24 AM PST by raccoonradio
On the heels of the announcement that Clear Channel will be donating Progressive Talk WDTW AM 1310 Detroit to MMTC (The Minority Media and Telecommunications Council) comes the news that the station will end operations and go silent at midnight on December 31st. WDTW's six tower array along I-94 east of Telegraph in Taylor will be dismantled after the station signs off.
Current morning show host Tony Trupiano broke the news at the end of his 6 - 10 a.m. program this morning. The decision to shutdown the station will cost Trupiano his gig after about 18 months with his last show taking place next Friday, December 21st. A clearly emotional Trupiano explained to listeners that he had been given two different explanations for the shutdown of the station, one official and one unofficial - and that he tended to believe the unofficial version. He told listeners he would be posting further information for listeners on his Facebook page.
Outside of the live/local morning drive show, WDTW primarily airs syndicated programming that includes shows from Stephanie Miller, Ed Schultz, Thom Hartmann, Randi Rhodes, Phil Hendrie, and Alan Colmes.
In the 1960s and early 1970s, AM 1310 was the home of legendary Top 40 station WKNR, known as Keener 13. It had been the longtime sister station to WNIC-FM 100.3 and was at one time the flagship station for Detroit Tigers baseball.
The station first began operations on December 29th, 1946 on AM 1540 as WKMH and moved to AM 1310 in 1948. The original owners were Fred Knorr, Bill McCoy, and Harvey Hansen ( thus the original "KMH" call sign). Knorr later bought out his partners and became the station's sole owner. After ownership passed from the Knorr family in 1972, ownership of the station (along with sister station WNIC) shifted among several different companies, ultimately becoming part of Clear Channel in 2000.
After the station's days as Keener 13, it went through a number of different formats including periods simulcasting WNIC-FM. Most notable of the station's formats over the last 40 years prior to the current Progressive Talk offering were perhaps the attempts at Full Service and a combination of Full Service and Classical as WYUR ('Your Radio'), Children's programming as WDOZ 'Radio AAHS', Sports as WXDX 'The X', and Classic Soul/Motown Gold as WMTG.
It's unclear how long the station will be silent pending the donation to MMTC which will attempt to find a minority owner that would likely launch its own programming.
I'm white - for Detoilet, that is the minority. Should I apply to the minority council to try to revive the underlying license?
The only time I heard him was driving to an evening class I took. Entertaining for the 3 months of the class. I guess he was on a 1Kw station in a city that I drove by on an interstate.
No signal from that station on the way home.
Jones...
I would come across on SW, hawking his dvds.
Bell...
He went really nuts after his 2nd wife died. Not that he was wasn't tightly wound before, but the quality of his sporadic weekend/guest appearances went straight downhill. His replacements during his "retirements" went from bad to mediocre, and the remnants of the show have generally been unlistenable for years.
The "area" CC simulcasting talkers were sold a few years back. FM went to stereo music, and the AM lost Rush, but kept C2CAM.
And if you lose the site, you may never find another one where you can stay on the same frequency, serve more then a sliver of your traditional area, and have a pattern with fewer than six nulls.
My hometown station outside Chicago got lucky, I guess. A daytimer that went on the air in 1949, my boss (the PD and CE) told me in 1961 that it would cost them about a hundred thousand (in 1961 dollars!) to go nighttime.
Years later, they did it. Took 4 towers, and a site far from their original one. They probably paid for the new plant with proceeds from the sale of the old site, which had become valuable commercial property by 1980 or so.
I got out of the USAF just before Christmas 1963, and was immediately drawn to WKNR. They played my kind of music. The Motown Summer of 1964 saw Keener in the forefront of the Motown movement.
I knew him and worked with him a bit when he was just getting started on my hometown station around ‘64.
A french name, no?
Is it pronounced De-twa-LAY?
Utne’s got their start in your neck of the woods and I kinda knew them...the two brothers
Even in Detroit?
KTLK in Minneapolis was flipped with a AM talk station. I assume you mean KTLK AM in la.
The FM one is now a sports talk station and the FM news talk (Rush, Hanity, Lewis) got dumped on the low power AM station.
The person whom I quoted above had said “KTLK AM 1150 in Los Angeles” and they still are prog talk. As for Minn., I do remember the flip of sports to FM and cons talk (Rush etc) to AM, but the call letters they now use are KTCN.
(Wiki.: “KTCN (1130 AM)—branded News/Talk 1130—is a commercial radio station licensed to Minneapolis, Minnesota, broadcasting a conservative news/talk format. The station is owned by Clear Channel Communications, and serves the Twin Cities market”)
I think as a news talker (forget the freq.) they were KTLK, yes.
Someone on the radio insight board, re: WDTW AM, said:
>>
Very suspicious move. Bain Capital is attempting to silence Liberal talk in a huge martket.
Writer Lance Venta replied:
>>NO. NO. NO. There is NO political conspiracy here. The station had a 0.3 rating. NOBODY was listening. If there was such a conspiracy against Liberal Talk, (then why) did Clear Channel drop Conservative Talk from similarly struggling stations in Boston and Atlanta in the past couple months? It’s business, nothing else.
Lance also says:
>>Bain owns Clear Channel, Bain DOES NOT operate Clear Channel. BIG DIFFERENCE. There is NO right-wing conspiracy afoot. AT ALL. Clear Channel is DONATING the station that began this discussion to a minority non-profit. So they will not be the ones who drop the programming, which invalidates your argument. And as mentioned, Conservative Talk is slowly dying as well. Clear Channel itself dropped the format in two markets of similar size to Detroit and has taken it off FM in San Diego. As we reported this week, Boston could soon go from the three conservative talkers it had in August to possibly one.* The problem is the content on both ends attracting listeners and more importantly advertisers.
http://radioinsight.com/blog/headlines/79963/clear-channel-donates-wdtw-detroit-to-mmtc/
*—(me): At the start of this year, WRKO 680, WXKS AM 1200,
WTKK 96.9—also WBZ has a conserv talk host at night.
WXKS flipped to comedy and rumors are rampant of a format change of 96.9 to a music format. The hosts are a morning team—liberal and moderate—and a conservative in the afternoon. Late morning host Doug Meehan left today to
take a job in TV
I like OTR, and the both "The Lone Ranger" and "Challenge of the Yukon" originated at WXYZ.
I listened to his show the first few days after Y2K and his listeners were asking for refunds for the survival kits they purchased that were needed. It was sad.
I assume you’re talking about Chuck? I believe he got started in Illinois didn’t he?
Jim Quinn here in Pittsburgh had the same thing happen. He was pushing Y2K really hard and then —poof— nothing.
I remember being in rural areas of Ohio and Michigan in the 90’s where the locals were into Harder bigtime. If he had told them to lock and load and march on Washington, I have no doubt they would have done it.
I got to meet Chuck one time when I was in Florida on vacation at the Telford. Let's say it was a different place.
Two guests that he seemed to have on all the time were Ralph Nader and Nick Begich, an academic from Alaska who had written a conspiracy theory book about Project HAARP (I believe he often did Art Bell’s show too).
Begich’s brother is now the Junior Democrat Senator from Alaska.
Forgot Nader. What a snore. And of course Eutus Mullins.
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