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WJMK (1250 AM) is a
radio station Radio broadcasting is the broadcasting 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 rad ...
broadcasting an
oldies Oldies is a term for musical genres such as pop music, rock and roll, doo-wop, surf music from the second half of the 20th century, specifically from around the mid-1950s to the 1980s, as well as for a radio format playing this music. Since 2 ...
format, serving the
Saginaw Saginaw () is a city in Saginaw County, Michigan, United States, and its county seat. It had a population of 44,202 at the 2020 census. Located along the Saginaw River, Saginaw is adjacent to Saginaw Charter Township and considered part of ...
/ Bay City,
Michigan Michigan ( ) is a peninsular U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest, Upper Midwestern United States. It shares water and land boundaries with Minnesota to the northwest, Wisconsin to the west, ...
market from its transmitter in
Bridgeport Bridgeport is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Connecticut and the fifth-most populous city in New England, with a population of 148,654 in 2020. Located in eastern Fairfield County at the mouth of the Pequonnock River on Long Is ...
, its city of license. WJMK is owned by Northern States Broadcasting. WJMK broadcasts with a power of 5,000 watts daytime, 1,100 watts at night, directed towards the north.


History


As WKNX (1210 AM)

WJMK's history can be traced back as early as April 17, 1947, when the station first signed on the air at 1210 AM as WKNX, owned by Lake Huron Broadcasting. The station was like many of its day, programming a full-service format of music, news, and talk. For many years, it was also a leading
Top 40 In the music industry, the Top 40 is a list of the 40 currently most popular songs in a particular genre. It is the best-selling or most frequently broadcast popular music. Record charts have traditionally consisted of a total of 40 songs. "To ...
hit music station in Saginaw, competing with WSAM (1400 AM) and Flint's WTAC (600 AM, now WSNL). Among the station's history was the acquisition of a sister television station in the 1950s, and was also the radio home of 1950s country music artist "Little" Jimmy Dickens. WKNX's resident "legend" would take form of University of Cincinnati graduate Robert Dyer, who joined the station in 1950 and remained a part of its staff for more than half a century. In 1977, Lake Huron Broadcasting acquired an FM station in the
Tampa Bay Tampa Bay is a large natural harbor and shallow estuary connected to the Gulf of Mexico on the west-central coast of Florida, comprising Hillsborough Bay, McKay Bay, Old Tampa Bay, Middle Tampa Bay, and Lower Tampa Bay. The largest freshwater i ...
region of
Florida Florida ( ; ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It borders the Gulf of Mexico to the west, Alabama to the northwest, Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia to the north, the Atlantic ...
-- WQYK-FM, a station that also carried a country format.


Move to Frankenmuth

The following year, in 1978, WKNX underwent a major change when it was purchased by Radiocom Limited, a company headed by Robert Dana McVay. WKNX's city of license was immediately changed to Frankenmuth, and the station's studios and offices were moved to 306 West Genesee Avenue in Frankenmuth, where it was later joined by a Tuscola-licensed sister FM station, WGMZ-FM (now WWBN), which programmed beautiful music. (The WGMZ calls and format moved from 107.9 FM, which became
WCRZ WCRZ (107.9 FM, "Cars 108") is a commercial radio station in Flint, Michigan, broadcasting an adult contemporary format and switching to Christmas music for much of November and December. WCRZ is the top-rated heritage station in the market. I ...
"Cars 108" in 1984.) By the early 1990s, WKNX-AM was programming
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 and ...
music and
adult standards Adult standards (also sometimes known as the nostalgia or Big Band format) is a North American radio format heard primarily on AM or class A FM stations. Adult standards started in the 1950s and is aimed at "mature" adults, meaning mainly tho ...
. Radiocom owned WKNX and leased out WGMZ (which would later become country-formatted WKMF and move its operations to Flint) until 1994, when WKNX was purchased by Detroit-based Bell Broadcasting Company in a frequency swap involving another AM station in Bay City (1250 WXOX), which had been silent since the early 1990s.


Sale to Bell Broadcasting and frequency swap

Bell Broadcasting owned WCHB, an AM station licensed to
Taylor Taylor, Taylors or Taylor's may refer to: People * Taylor (surname) ** List of people with surname Taylor * Taylor (given name), including Tayla and Taylah * Taylor sept, a branch of Scottish clan Cameron * Justice Taylor (disambiguation) ...
, which operated at a daytime signal of 25,000 watts and a nighttime signal of 1,000 watts. WCHB was a talk station targeted to an African-American audience. The company's intent was to acquire WKNX's frequency of 1210 and silence it in order to provide WCHB with a 50,000-watt daytime signal. WKNX would then acquire the license of WXOX, which had first signed on in 1956 as a station first licensed to Essexville. Over time, the 1,000-watt station, operating at 1250 kHz, began broadcasting from Bay City with its co-owned Pinconning-licensed FM sister at 100.9. By the end of the 1980s, both stations had separated ownership, ran into financial trouble and fell silent. 100.9 was spun off to a new owner in 1991, but WXOX remained silent. Bell would then have WKNX assume WXOX's 1250 AM frequency and its abandoned three-tower directional transmitter site in Bridgeport. In January 1997, WKNX signed on at 1250 AM, and 1210 AM was placed at WXOX and assigned the new call letters WJZZ, though it did not sign back on from Frankenmuth or the surrounding area. (The former WXOX calls have since been recycled for a
Cleveland Cleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located along the southern shore of Lake Erie, it is situated across the Canada–U.S. maritime border and approximately west of the Ohio-Pennsylvania st ...
low-powered TV station, now WTCL-LD.) The FCC then granted WJZZ a request to change its city of license to Kingsley, a village near Traverse City, located on the other side of Michigan. The move allowed WJZZ to increase its power from 10,000 to 50,000 watts, as it was no longer in the path of WCHB. WJZZ was later sold and later became WLDR (now WJNL).


Sale to Frankenmuth Broadcasting

WKNX continued its format of middle-of-the-road music under the moniker "Memories 1250". Six months after the frequency change, WKNX was sold by Bell Broadcasting to Frankenmuth Broadcasting, a company owned by WKNX announcer John Blehm and his wife Kathy, who were committed to keeping the station in Frankenmuth. Four years later, the music became more rock-and-roll oldies-based and also added religious-based talk programming during the daytime hours. WKNX was granted permission to broadcast at night two years later with a power output of 129 watts, directional. Concurrent with the application, WKNX moved its studio and office operations from Frankenmuth to its transmitter facility at 2850 Gabel Road in Bridgeport Township. In January 2004, Frankenmuth Broadcasting applied for a power increase from 1,000 to 5,000 watts. Two months later, Frankenmuth Broadcasting entered into an agreement to sell WKNX to the Meredith Corporation for $1.1 million.


WNEM

In the summer of 2004, the parent company of
WNEM-TV WNEM-TV (channel 5) is a television station licensed to Bay City, Michigan, United States, serving northeastern Michigan as a dual affiliate of CBS and MyNetworkTV. Owned by Gray Media, the station maintains studios on North Franklin Street in ...
,
Meredith Corporation Meredith Corporation was an American media conglomerate based in Des Moines, Iowa, that owned newspapers, magazines, television stations, and websites. Its publications had a readership of more than 120 million and paid circulation of more than ...
, purchased WKNX. Soon after the purchase, the call sign was changed to "WNEM" and shifted its studios to the television studio building in downtown Saginaw at 107 North Franklin Street. Unlike its TV counterpart, however, the AM station does not serve Flint or areas south of Saginaw County, due to the
directional antenna A directional antenna or beam antenna is an antenna that radiates or receives greater radio wave power in specific directions. Directional antennas can radiate radio waves in beams, when greater concentration of radiation in a certain directio ...
array beamed towards the north. The station was also simulcasted via the Internet on WNEM's website, except for sports coverage. In a coincidental situation, WNEM-TV rival
WEYI-TV WEYI-TV (channel 25) is a television station licensed to Saginaw, Michigan, United States, serving the Great Lakes Bay Region of Central Michigan as an affiliate of NBC. Owned by Howard Stirk Holdings, WEYI-TV is operated by Sinclair Broadcas ...
was founded as WKNX-TV, a sister station to WKNX radio; it was sold off in 1972. This also once again gave WNEM-TV a radio sister, which they lost in 1969 when Gerity Broadcasting, which owned WNEM-FM (now WIOG), sold WNEM-TV to Meredith. The FCC granted WNEM permission in January 2006 to operate at the new power levels with the addition of a fourth tower in its directional antenna pattern. At one point programmed as an all-news station, WNEM's primary programming later consisted of simulcasts of WNEM-TV's newscasts, syndicated talk shows (including '' Michael Patrick Shiels in the Morning'', '' The Neal Boortz Show'', and '' The Dave Ramsey Show''), and syndicated regional sports and additional programming. WNEM picked up
Detroit Red Wings The Detroit Red Wings (colloquially referred to as the Wings) are a professional ice hockey team based in Detroit. The Red Wings compete in the National Hockey League (NHL) as a member of the Atlantic Division (NHL), Atlantic Division in the East ...
ice hockey Ice hockey (or simply hockey in North America) is a team sport played on ice skates, usually on an Ice rink, ice skating rink with Ice hockey rink, lines and markings specific to the sport. It belongs to a family of sports called hockey. Tw ...
coverage in late 2005, making it mid-Michigan's only source of
NHL The National Hockey League (NHL; , ''LNH'') is a professional ice hockey league in North America composed of 32 teams25 in the United States and 7 in Canada. The NHL is one of the major professional sports leagues in the United States and Cana ...
hockey. Following the station's sale and format change, coverage of Red Wings games moved to WSGW. The station was not profitable, as it had a poor signal in which it would drop from a daytime high of about 5,000 to 1,000 watts at night. Meredith looked for a buyer to no avail, thus looking to donate the station instead. By May 1, 2013, with Meredith giving up ownership, the station went dark.


WHHQ

On May 30, 2013, Meredith had donated WNEM radio's license, equipment, tower and land to Ave Maria Communications, which currently brokers all its Catholic-related programming on WMAX (1440 AM) in Bay City. The station changed its call sign to WHHQ on June 18, 2013. The two stations were to be complementary programmed. WHHQ simulcasted WMAX's programming, despite its considerable overlap of the parent station's coverage area. Ave Maria Radio later moved the studios to A-M Church Supply at 3535 Bay Road in Saginaw Township.


WJMK

On April 4, 2018, WHHQ was sold for $175,000 to Northern States Broadcasting Corporation. The station changed call letters to WJMK (last used by 104.3 FM in Chicago) on April 3, 2018, and picked up the MeTV FM easy oldies format originating on WRME-LP (87.7 FM) in Chicago run by Weigel Broadcasting. The station is simulcasted on FM translator station W257EO at 99.3 MHz, which can be picked up in the immediate Saginaw area.


References


External links


WNEM History
* * {{Oldies Radio Stations in Michigan JMK (AM) Radio stations established in 1956 1956 establishments in Michigan Oldies radio stations in the United States