WCST is a

News News is information about current events. This may be provided through many different media: word of mouth, printing, postal systems, broadcasting, electronic communication, or through the testimony of observers and witnesses to events. N ...

Talk Talk may refer to: Communication * Communication, the encoding and decoding of exchanged messages between people * Conversation, interactive communication between two or more people * Lecture, an oral presentation intended to inform or instruct ...

Sports Sport pertains to any form of competitive physical activity or game that aims to use, maintain, or improve physical ability and skills while providing enjoyment to participants and, in some cases, entertainment to spectators. Sports can, ...

formatted broadcast

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 radi ...

licensed to Berkeley Springs, West Virginia, serving Berkeley Springs and

Morgan County, West Virginia Morgan County is a county located in the U.S. state of West Virginia. As of the 2020 census, the population was 17,063. Its county seat is Berkeley Springs. The county was formed in 1820 from parts of Hampshire and Berkeley Counties and named ...

. WCST is owned John and David Raese's

West Virginia Radio Corporation WVRC Media is a media corporation comprising radio stations and two radio networks based in the state of West Virginia. The company was known as the West Virginia Radio Corporation prior to a December 2021 rebranding. The company is controlle ...

, through licensee West Virginia Radio Corporation of the Alleghenies. WCST simulcasts

Martinsburg, West Virginia Martinsburg is a city in and the seat of Berkeley County, West Virginia, in the tip of the state's Eastern Panhandle region in the lower Shenandoah Valley. Its population was 18,835 in the 2021 census estimate, making it the largest city in the E ...

-based sister-station WEPM.

History

WCST signed on the air on September 7, 1958. WCST started with Dale Brooks, Tom Butcher, Kenny Robertson and Gary Daniels. They offered local programming, advertising and rock n' roll music. The call letters of the station were a tribute to Charles S. Trump, a major force behind getting the station on the air. WCST adopted FM in 1965 and changed its genre to country music with the frequency 93.5. It was sold in the 1980s to Sam and Mary Lou Trump and later to Emmett Capper in 1995. For many years WCST played country music, 23 hours a day; why they went off the air for just one hour remains a mystery. AM1010 was reported to be dark several times, but is just a tough catch even within town limits due to a bad tower location and tower ground system. In the Summer of 2006, Berkeley Springs High School games and other local programming, which were heard on sister station WDHC, were moved to WCST when WDHC moved to 92.9. Also in 2006, WCST and WDHC finally made a presence on the internet of sorts, with a MySpace Group operated by employees of the station. Currently, WCST and

WXDC WXDC (92.9 FM) is a country music formatted broadcast radio station licensed to Berkeley Springs, West Virginia, serving Berkeley Springs in West Virginia and Hancock in Maryland. WXDC is owned John and David Raese's West Virginia Radio Corpor ...

(formerly WDHC) each have an active Facebook page. In March 2014, WCST changed its format from News/Talk to Country, with the branding "Cat Country 1010AM WCST". In January 2017, WCST was sold with sister station WDHC (now WXDC) to Metro Radio of

Fairfax, Virginia The City of Fairfax ( ), colloquially known as Fairfax City, Downtown Fairfax, Old Town Fairfax, Fairfax Courthouse, FFX, or simply Fairfax, is an independent city (United States), independent city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth ...

, who owns WTNT in the Washington D.C. radio market. The sale was consummated on March 1, 2017 at a price of $365,000. In May 2017, WCST began simulcasting the Classic Hits format of WXDC, which flipped to

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 ...

at the beginning of 2018. WCST was granted a construction permit for

FM translator A broadcast relay station, also known as a satellite station, relay transmitter, broadcast translator (U.S.), re-broadcaster (Canada), repeater (two-way radio) or complementary station (Mexico), is a broadcast transmitter which repeats (or tra ...

W228DU on January 11, 2018. The translator rebroadcasts WCST on 93.5 FM from the WXDC/WCST transmitter site east of Berkeley Springs. On May 1, 2019,

began operating WCST and sister station

as it begins the process of buying the stations from Metro Radio. The local marketing agreement with Diane Smith ended on April 30, 2019. At Midnight on May 1, 2019, WCST's programming shifted from a simulcast of sister station WXDC to a simulcast of Martinsburg-based WEPM's

under the branding "The Panhandle News Network". The sale, at a price of $365,000, was consummated on March 3, 2021.

Translator

In addition to the main station, WCST is relayed by an FM translator to widen its broadcast area.

References

External links

The Panhandle News Network Online
* {{West Virginia Radio Corporation Bath (Berkeley Springs), West Virginia 1958 establishments in West Virginia ESPN Radio stations News and talk radio stations in the United States Sports radio stations in the United States Radio stations established in 1958 CST