Newsweb is breaking up its “Chicago’s Progressive Talk” quadracast.
While 820 WCPT Willow Springs and 92.5 WCPY Dekalb will retain the Liberal Talk format, Robert Feder reports that 92.7 WCPT-FM Arlington Heights and 99.9 WCPQ will replace the Talk format with brokered Polish programming billed as Polski.fm starting on Monday, June 2.
Polski.fm will air daily from 5am to 7pm with a mix of news, talk and music serving the sizable Polish community in the Chicago area. Nights will continue to feature TKC Entertainment’s brokered “Dance Factory Radio“, which has aired on the stations since 2007.
Newsweb President Charley Gross told Feder that the reason for breaking off 92.7 and 99.9 “eliminates our broadcasting the same programming on multiple stations in the same area for much of the day and brings in a new revenue source to support our ongoing operations,” while “the 92.5 FM coverage complements the nighttime 820 AM signal as it fills in areas where the nighttime 820 AM is not as strong.”
92.7 WCPT-FM operates with 1.8kW at 116 meters serving the northern suburbs of Chicago. 99.9 WCPY is a Class B running 50kW at 150 meters serving the southern and eastern portions of the Chicago market including Joliet, Kankakee, and Gary, IN.
I recall when 92.7 was the Bear, WCBR-FM. A friend would send me airchecks of a blues show they had called Hambone’s Blues Hour (ran ads for local blues places etc)
Kudos, it pleases me when I see a format flip to an European ethnic which is extremely rare in this day and age. Instead of the constant Hispanic and Asian formats popping up all over. Failing stations should flip to Italian, German, French, etc., language formats so these peoples can identify with their cultures and traditions.
There are probably some regulars who read this board who wished the WCPT/WCPQ simulcast would have gone 24/7 contemporary dance instead.