Hours after Scripps flipped Variety Hits “94.5 The Lake” WLWK-FM Milwaukee to “KTI Country“, Magnum Communications has quickly resurrected the brand and format in portions of the market.
Country “Q92.1” WMKQ Racine became “92.1 The Lake” this afternoon. The move takes WMKQ from being a fringe player in the battle between WKTI and iHeartMedia’s 106.1 WMIL to having a niche format to themselves. WMKQ itself had only flipped to Country last December after a long run as AC WEZY.
WMKQ covers the southern portions of the Milwaukee market from the city to the Illinois state line.
92.1 The Lake is all about the variety – with songs ranging from today’s favorites like Bruno Mars and Katy Perry, to your all-time favorites from the 80’s, 90’s and more – like Billy Joel, The Rolling Stones, Madonna, U2, and Pink… just to name a few.
Dave Magnum, President of Magnum Media, stated “Milwaukee is such a heritage pop/rock market so our team was shocked today that another station dropped the format. We are gladly adopting their former listeners now, with the same variety that people love, at 92.1 FM and online at 921TheLake.com. We have a wonderful advantage being a family owned Wisconsin Media Company because we can make local decisions promptly to serve our local listeners and advertiser customers.”
only1moore 
Fightingirish 
tommyin2011 
ksradiogeek 
StogieGuy 
Wow! That was fast! Now if they were to cover the entire area..,
I wouldn’t be surprised if there wasn’t some kind of backroom deal struck yesterday between Magnum and Scripps, where Magnum offered to drop country on 92.1 in exchange for the moniker, logo, music, intellectual property, etc. of the Lake.
What they did was pointless. They went to all that trouble just to flip flop the channels, because that is essentially what they did. Why did they even go to all that work.
Cool…Milwaukee lost its Variety station…like Milwaukee really needed variety (sarcasm)… Now we can go back to just having 2 different formats instead of 3. Yay!
92.1 doesn’t reach Milwaukee well…that’s no secret. You can maybe get it clear on the southside while in the car, but not in the house. Now whenever I want to listen to the Lake, it’s not the convenient push of a button that it always was on my radio. Now, I have to dig in an app and stream it, not to mention, eat up my data. Thanks Journal Broadcasting Group!
Scripps, bud. Journal in that sense no longer exists.
And at least this will satisfy the displaced Lakers. Still surprised KTI came back, as I (and probably not a lot of others) expected it.
As Lance pointed out, this was a pretty logical move for Magnum in having an entire format to themselves as opposed to absolutely squashed by iHM and WMIL. The fact that it’s a rimshot signal is just life and how the signal is for you is entirely dependent on where you are. I live south of the IL border and sometimes commute to Milwaukee for work and 92.1 is solid the entire way.
Now, Magnum could have thrown it’s 92.5 signal north of the area in as a simulcast, but apparently decided that the country format would do better there. Given that this signal serves the area between Milwaukee and Fond du Lac/Sheboygan, this probably makes sense.