WCCR (1260 AM) is a commercial

radio station Radio broadcasting is transmission of audio (sound), sometimes with related metadata, by radio waves to radio receivers belonging to a public audience. In terrestrial radio broadcasting the radio waves are broadcast by a land-based radio ...

licensed to

Cleveland, Ohio Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S ...

, known as "AM 1260 The Rock" and carrying a

Catholic The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

-oriented

religious Religion is usually defined as a social- cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that generally relates humanity to supernatur ...

format. Owned by St. Peter the Rock Media, Inc., a

nonprofit corporation A nonprofit corporation is any legal entity which has been incorporated under the law of its jurisdiction for purposes other than making profits for its owners or shareholders. Depending on the laws of the jurisdiction, a nonprofit corporation may ...

which has applied for

501(c)(3) A 501(c)(3) organization is a United States corporation, trust, unincorporated association or other type of organization exempt from federal income tax under section 501(c)(3) of Title 26 of the United States Code. It is one of the 29 types of ...

tax-exempt status with the

Internal Revenue Service The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is the revenue service for the United States federal government, which is responsible for collecting U.S. federal taxes and administering the Internal Revenue Code, the main body of the federal statutory t ...

, WCCR serves

Greater Cleveland The Cleveland metropolitan area, or Greater Cleveland as it is more commonly known, is the metropolitan area surrounding the city of Cleveland in Northeast Ohio, United States. According to the 2020 United States Census results, the five-county ...

as the local affiliate for

EWTN Radio The Eternal Word Television Network, more commonly known by its initials EWTN, is an American basic cable television network which presents around-the-clock Catholic-themed programming. It is not only the largest Catholic television network in ...

. WCCR's studios are located in the Cleveland

suburb A suburb (more broadly suburban area) is an area within a metropolitan area, which may include commercial and mixed-use, that is primarily a residential area. A suburb can exist either as part of a larger city/urban area or as a separ ...

Broadview Heights Broadview Heights is a city in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, United States, and a suburb in the Greater Cleveland area. The city's population was 19,936 at the 2020 census. History Early history Native Americans once occupied the land that is now p ...

and the station transmitter resides in neighboring

Brecksville Brecksville is a city in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, United States, and a suburb in the Greater Cleveland area. The city's population was 13,635 at the United States 2020 Census. History Brecksville was founded in 1811, four years after several men ...

History

WDOK

The station began on April 30, 1950, as WDOK when Wayne Mack resigned his position at WGAR (1220 AM) to establish the station with Frederick C. Wolf and chief engineer Morris Pierce, who became station president.WDOK (AM) History
Cleveland Broadcast Radio Archives Project. Retrieved on 2007-01-01. Wolf himself was a longtime ethnic broadcaster on Cleveland stations WHK, WJAY, and WGAR, in addition to being the founder of Cleveland Recording Co. for the production of spot commercials, nationality music, and auditions. Early programming was highlighted by Wayne Mack's imaginary concert programs, such as "Hometown Band Concert", "Candlelight Concert", and "Waltz Palace." WDOK's format was soon simulcast full-time on WDOK 102.1-FM. Throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, the station maintained a format of adult standards, although it did buck contemporary music trends by broadcasting two hours of classical music programming each night. By 1957, WDOK also was the radio home for 18 different nationality programs, most of them broadcast on Sundays. Wolf sold his stake in WDOK and WDOK-FM to Transcontinent Television Corp. of New York in 1962. Meanwhile, across town in the early 1960s, top-40 radio was flourishing led by KYW and WHK. In July 1964, three account executives at WHK – Norman Wain, Bob Weiss, and Joe Zingale – quit their jobs to form Westchester Corporation. They purchased WFAS in

White Plains, New York (Always Faithful) , image_seal = WhitePlainsSeal.png , seal_link = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = , subdivision_type1 = State , subdivision_name1 = , subdivis ...

(located in Westchester County, hence Westchester Corporation) in December 1964, and honed their skills in running a top-40 station. They returned to Cleveland the following year and purchased WDOK and WDOK-FM in November 1965.WIXY/WMGC History
Cleveland Broadcast Radio Archives Project. Retrieved on 2007-01-01.

WIXY 1260

On December 12, 1965, the AM station changed its call sign to WIXY, branding itself as ''WIXY 1260'' (pronounced "Wicksy Twelve-Sixty"). The new call sign was similar to WXYZ in Detroit - and which also used the "Wixie" nickname - and also was selected for its rhyming with the 1260 frequency. The initial on-air lineup included Al Gates, Howie Lund, Johnny Michaels, Johnny Canton, Mark Allen, and Bobby Magic. Allen later moved on to Chicago's WCFL under the name Bob Dearborn. The news staff included Bob Engel, Fred Griffith, and Gary Ritchie. WIXY soon began to dominate top-40 radio in Cleveland, despite having a weaker signal than either

WKYC WKYC (channel 3) is a television station in Cleveland, Ohio, United States, affiliated with NBC and owned by Tegna Inc. Its studios are located on Tom Beres Way (a section of Lakeside Avenue in Downtown Cleveland named after the station's lon ...

(formerly KYW) or WHK. In 1966, WIXY sponsored

The Beatles The Beatles were an English Rock music, rock band, formed in Liverpool in 1960, that comprised John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. They are regarded as the Cultural impact of the Beatles, most influential band of al ...

' second concert in Cleveland on August 14. (WHK had sponsored the first concert in 1964.) DJs who are remembered for their stint at WIXY during the late 1960s and early 1970s include Mike Reineri, Dick "Wilde Childe" Kemp, Larry "the Duker" Morrow (who settled in Cleveland after a stint as "Duke Windsor" on

CKLW CKLW (800 AM) is a commercial radio station in Windsor, Ontario, serving Southwestern Ontario and Metro Detroit. CKLW has a news/ talk format. It features local hosts in morning and afternoon drive times, with syndicated Canadian hosts ...

), Billy Bass, Lou "The King" Kirby, Bob Shannon,

Chuck Dunaway Chuck Dunaway was a retired radio personality and owner known for his work with a number of popular radio stations in Texas, Ohio, Oklahoma and New York City. Dunaway occupied the afternoon drive slot at every radio station he worked at during h ...

, and Jackson Armstrong (

Big Jack Armstrong Big Jack Armstrong (born John Charles Larsh on December 4, 1945, in Durham County, North Carolina; died March 23, 2008, in High Point, North Carolina), also known as Jack Armstrong, Jackson W. Armstrong, and Big Jack Your Leader, was a top-40 d ...

"Your Leader"). WDOK-FM was, however, left untouched and still programmed by Wayne Mack. When Westchester Corporation saw the growing and devoted listener base that their largely ignored FM station was developing, WDOK was branded "Stereo Cleveland – Beautiful Music for the land of the Western Reserve." While the FM station soon passed over into separate ownership, Wayne Mack stayed at WDOK until 1980, and died in October 2000. In 1969, Westchester Corporation took the format to the

Pittsburgh Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Wester ...

market, purchasing WMCK in suburban

McKeesport, Pennsylvania McKeesport is a city in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, United States. It is situated at the confluence of the Monongahela and Youghiogheny rivers and within the Pittsburgh metropolitan area. The population was 17,727 as of the 2020 census. ...

, and changing the calls to WIXZ. The Pittsburgh-area station used the same graphics and jingles as the Cleveland station - it was called "WIXZ 1360" (pronounced "Wick-zee Thirteen Sixty") - but failed to impact Pittsburgh as it had Cleveland, putting only a dent in the dominance of top-40 leader KQV. The top-40 format at WIXZ lasted in various forms until 1974, and the call letters remained in place until it became talk station WPTT in 1999. The local ownership of WIXY was gobbled up by larger communications corporations in the 1970s. Wain, Weiss, and Zingale merged Westchester Corporation into Globetrotter Communications for $14.3 million in December 1971. Combined Communications (later

Gannett Gannett Co., Inc. () is an American mass media holding company headquartered in McLean, Virginia, in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area.
"WIXY 1260"
exists today as an online tribute station based in the Cleveland area airing the original PAMS jingles and classic 1960s and '70s hits.

Talk, oldies, big band

With the emergence of

FM radio FM broadcasting is a method of radio broadcasting using frequency modulation (FM). Invented in 1933 by American engineer Edwin Armstrong, wide-band FM is used worldwide to provide high fidelity sound over broadcast radio. FM broadcasting is cap ...

, the era of AM top-40 radio drew to a close. On July 19, 1976, WIXY became WMGC (or "Magic"), and the format switched to "adult rock", an early iteration of what would become known as

adult contemporary Adult contemporary music (AC) is a form of radio-played popular music, ranging from 1960s vocal and 1970s soft rock music to predominantly ballad-heavy music of the present day, with varying degrees of easy listening, pop, soul, R&B, quie ...

. The station adopted the slogan "Get Your Rock Soft", which raised some eyebrows when it appeared in ads and billboards around town. Although it never caught on with a large audience, WMGC was home to several of the area's top broadcasters, including General Manager Dick Conrad, Program Director Jeff Baxter, and DJs Dan Bradford and Lady J. Also on the air as the most popular of the WMGC personalities was Dave Sanderson. In reality, Sanderson was well-known local broadcaster David Mark, who had to assume the Sanderson name due to contractual obligations to WKSW-FM and WEWS-TV. The adult rock format lasted less than three years. On April 14, 1979, the station became WBBG and switched to

talk radio Talk radio is a radio format containing discussion about topical issues and consisting entirely or almost entirely of original spoken word content rather than outside music. Most shows are regularly hosted by a single individual, and often featu ...

, under the name "SuperTalk 1260". The original lineup included several veteran Cleveland radio personalities – Bill Gordon, Merle Pollis, Ted Alexander,

Bill Randle Bill Randle (March 14, 1923 – July 9, 2004) was an American disc jockey, lawyer and university professor. Randle was born William McKinley Randle Jr. in Detroit, Michigan. In Detroit, he hosted a popular show on WJLB-AM radio (now WDTK) calle ...

, Ed Fisher,

Bruce Drennan Bruce Drennan (born May 1, 1950 in Chicago, Illinois) is an American sportscaster based in Cleveland, Ohio. A former Major League Baseball (MLB) announcer, National Basketball Association (NBA) announcer, and sports radio personality, Drennan ho ...

with ''Sportstalk'', and Cynthia Smith with the overnight program ''NightFlight 1260''.WBBG History
Cleveland Broadcast Radio Archives Project. Retrieved on 2007-01-01. WBBG's talk format never caught on, so the station turned to an

oldies Oldies is a term for musical genres such as pop music, rock and roll, doo-wop, surf music (broadly characterized as classic rock and pop rock) from the second half of the 20th century, specifically from around the mid-1950s to the 1980s, as w ...

format briefly before finding success with a

big band A big band or jazz orchestra is a type of musical ensemble of jazz music that usually consists of ten or more musicians with four sections: saxophones, trumpets, trombones, and a rhythm section. Big bands originated during the early 1910s ...

-based music format programmed by local radio veteran Jim Davis. The station enjoyed much success including " ''Billboard'' Station of the Year" (for its format) in 1983 with a nomination of "Program Director of the Year" going to Davis. During its glory years (July 1981–October 1987), on-air talent, in addition to Davis, included Al James, Tom Armstrong, Bill Randle, Carl Reese, Ronnie Barrett, Dick Conrad, John Webster, Ted Alexander, Joe Black, and Jack Reynolds. Ownership of WBBG and sister FM station WWWM passed from Embrescia Communications (led by Tom Embrescia) to Robinson Communications (led by local civic leader and jeweler Larry Robinson) on October 27, 1981. (WWWM's call sign changed to

WMJI WMJI (105.7 MHz) – branded ''Majic 105.7'' – is a commercial FM radio station licensed to Cleveland, Ohio, serving Greater Cleveland and much of surrounding Northeast Ohio. It is owned by iHeartMedia and broadcasts a classic hits r ...

six months later.) Robinson, in turn, sold the stations to media giant Jacor Communications on September 19, 1984.WMJI-FM History
Cleveland Broadcast Radio Archives Project. Retrieved on 2007-01-01. WBBG's call letters (originally stood for "Boys from Bowling Green")
Cleveland Broadcast Radio Archives Project. Retrieved on 2007-01-01. soon took the meaning "Big Band Grandstand." After an attempt by Robinson to repurchase WBBG so that Jacor could buy WWWE collapsed, the big-band format was dumped on October 29, 1987, and Jacor simulcast the air signal of WMJI-FM 105.7 on the AM station. The AM call sign was changed to WMJI on November 24, 1987Call Sign History for WCCR
from FCC'S AM station database. Retrieved 2007-01-01. Note that it only goes back to WMJI (AM). to match the FM station's (which legally became WMJI-FM for the interim). The big band format - and program director Jim Davis - soon migrated over to crosstown station WRMR.

Later years

After a few months of FM simulcasting, Jacor sold the station to Gore-Overgaard Broadcasting (led by Harold W. Gore and Cordell J. Overgaard), a Christian organization brought a format of religious programming and gospel music. The call sign was changed to WRDZ on July 1, 1988. Under Gore-Overgaard ownership, the station received permission to double its daytime power from 5,000 to 10,000 watts, although the upgrade was not accomplished until Divine Mercy Communications, Ltd. purchased and installed the new transmitter provided for in the license change. In early 1995, the station was purchased by Divine Mercy Communications Ltd., and it brought the format of Catholic programming. Under new call letters WMIH (for Mary's Immaculate Heart), which were adopted on February 23, 1995, the station was purported to be the first commercial Catholic radio station in the country. The station inaugurated its new format on February 22 by broadcasting a noon mass live from St. John's Cathedral celebrated by Bishop Anthony Pilla.WMIH History
Cleveland Broadcast Radio Archives Project. Retrieved 2007-01-01. Regular programming centered on a live morning drive-time program called ''Genesis'', hosted by Fr. Wally Hyclack and Cleveland broadcast veteran Bob Tayek, which featured

NBC Radio The National Broadcasting Company's NBC Radio Network (known as the NBC Red Network prior to 1942) was an American commercial radio network which was in operation from 1926 through 2004. Along with the NBC Blue Network it was one of the first tw ...

news and local newsmaker interviews, and an evening drive program, named "Homeward Bound", with a local call-in format on current topics. Midday programming included a live, local, two-hour talk show called ''Ave Maria'', a local information and spiritual support program called the ''Living Word'' with Cleveland nun Sr. Juanita Sheely, broadcasts of various Catholic speakers, in a program called ''Catholic Classroom'', which included Bishop Fulton J. Sheen's programs from the 1950s. In addition, the station produced live daily mass from St. John's Cathedral and carried regular installments of the English versions of Vatican broadcasts. WMIH also produced live play-by-play coverage of Saint Ignatius High School (Cleveland) football and basketball games, both home and away, as well as live remotes from Cleveland-area Catholic events, such as the Feast of the Assumption in Cleveland's Little Italy. The station also provided its own live, on-location coverage of

Pope John Paul II Pope John Paul II ( la, Ioannes Paulus II; it, Giovanni Paolo II; pl, Jan Paweł II; born Karol Józef Wojtyła ; 18 May 19202 April 2005) was the head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State from 1978 until his ...

's entire trip to New York and Baltimore in 1995, with coverage anchored by owner Steve Kurdziel and local reports from Cuyahoga County Commissioner Lee Weingart.

Radio Disney AM 1260

Despite the innovative programming produced by WMIH, and the devoted listenership from the Catholic community in Cleveland, Divine Mercy ended up having serious financial trouble in maintaining that original programming, which emphasized local hosts and remote coverage of sports and other events. At the same time, ABC Radio was looking for an outlet for its

Radio Disney Radio Disney was an American radio network operated by the Disney Radio Networks unit of Disney Branded Television within the Disney General Entertainment Content, headquartered in Burbank, California. The network broadcast music programmi ...

in the Cleveland market, and it purchased the station. It took over the station on May 1, 1998, and the call sign was changed to WWMK on December 4. On August 13, 2014, Disney put WWMK and 22 other Radio Disney stations up for sale, to focus more on digital distribution of the Radio Disney network.

AM 1260 The Rock

On December 24, 2014, the station was sold to St. Peter the Rock Media, a nonprofit company created by former Akron attorney Patrick D'Andrea and Cleveland attorney Gerald Monroe. They announced the station would become an

affiliate, with a

format under the branding ''AM 1260 The Rock'' - returning it to its prior format before the Radio Disney buyout. The new ownership group originally targeted April 2015 for the format switch, but later was changed for May. On April 24, 2015, WWMK disaffiliated from Radio Disney, and went silent. St. Peter the Rock Media took over the station on May 4, upon consummation of the purchase from Radio Disney at a price of $895,000. On May 7, 2015, the station changed the call sign to WCCR and began its new format.Call Sign History - Federal Communications Commission
/ref>

References

External links

* *
WIXY1260.comWIXY1260online.comFCC History Cards for WCCR
{{Authority control 1950 establishments in Ohio CCR Radio stations established in 1950 CCR Catholic radio stations Former subsidiaries of The Walt Disney Company