Traverse City's Radio Airwaves Crackle With Change

Legal battles, technical difficulties, mergers and acquisitions: just a few of the upheavals playing out in the world of northern Michigan radio, where huge changes are underway on the airwaves.

In October, Traverse City’s WLDR-FM 101.9 went silent due to the collapse of a local management agreement (LMA) between owner Roy Henderson and the Grayling-based Blarney Stone Broadcasting. Blarney Stone had taken over operations of 101.9 and Henderson’s other northern Michigan radio stations in the fall of 2018. The other stations that were a part of the agreement, including entities broadcasting from Beulah and Frankfort, also went silent.

“We had an agreement for Blarney Stone to program, operate, and monetize Roy's five stations throughout the region,” says Sheryl Coyne, president and co-owner of Blarney Stone Broadcasting. “Within that agreement, there was a requirement that the stations needed to be powered up to 95 percent of their effective radiated power, which never happened…you can't monetize stations that people can't hear, thus the partnership ended.”

Coyne claims that Henderson “illegally” turned WLDR-FM off on October 24. In an effort to keep WLDR’s programming on the air -- particularly the popular “Finster in the Morning” show -- Blarney Stone launched North-FM. The new brand exists thanks to a new LMA with two other stations: 94.5 WYPV in Mackinaw City and 106.3 WWMN in Thompsonville. Coyne says North-FM is essentially WLDR on new frequencies, as it has retained WLDR’s adult contemporary format and most of its staff. “Finster in the Morning” and other programs are now broadcasting from a new Blarney Stone studio at The Village at Grand Traverse Commons.

Meanwhile, Henderson has filed a lawsuit against Blarney Stone. Coyne declined to discuss the litigation in detail, saying that the matter is “still pending.” Henderson also declined to comment, other than to say that the lawsuit “remains actively ongoing.”

Also currently off the air is WIAA-88.7 FM, one of the classical music stations operated by Interlochen Public Radio (IPR). Simone Silverbush, director of media relations and communications for Interlochen Center for the Arts (which owns IPR), tells The Ticker that radio transmission from the WIAA antenna failed unexpectedly on the evening of December 16. The 88.7 frequency has been silent ever since.

Silverbush says the issue is a “malfunction in our radio tower’s antenna array, which will need to be dismantled and rebuilt by a specialized crew.” The challenge so far – and the reason the station isn’t back up and running a month and a half later – is weather.

“Snow and ice have made it unsafe for our crew to climb the tower to do this work, despite several attempts,” Silverbush explains. “We anticipate that the crew will resume work in a few weeks, as soon as the weather allows for safe work conditions.” Interlochen has already spent $7,250 on climbing and equipment costs, and has earmarked an additional $27,000 for remaining work.

Silverbush adds that IPR may install a “low-power back-up antenna” as early as this week, which would get 88.7 FM back on the air with a reduced geographical range. In the meantime, she says that Traverse City listeners can still tune into Classical IPR at 94.7 FM.

Elsewhere, several major northern Michigan radio brands are changing ownership. Northern Broadcast, Inc., long the owner of WKLT and WFCX “The Fox” FM has been seeking to sell its northern Michigan stations for several years. In 2016, Blarney Stone entered into a tentative agreement to purchase Northern Broadcast’s local radio assets. That deal ultimately fell through. Now, Midwestern Broadcasting – owners of WTCM, WCCW, Z93, and other area stations – is preparing to take over ownership of WKLT.

Chris Warren, general manager of Midwestern, says the deal is in its final stages and is primarily awaiting FCC approval. He predicts the deal will officially close in the next month, at which point KLT will move into Midwestern’s WTCM facility on Front Street. The acquisition will allow Warren to fill the last real void in Midwestern’s programming.

“A rock station, for years, has been something that appealed to us,” Warren says. “We've got just about every other format in the market covered except that…when the opportunity presented itself [to buy the station], we were very excited.”

Warren says Midwestern will be “doing a little bit of restructuring” to the programming at WKLT, teasing several “marquee talents” that will either be moving over to the new ownership structure or coming back to KLT after multi-year absences.

Other stations from the Northern Broadcast cluster are seeing changes as well. In December, the company inked a $500,000 deal with Central Michigan University (CMU) for WFCX. A report on CMU’s website says the acquisition “will expand WCMU's reach to all of the Grand Traverse and north central Michigan regions.”

Also in December, Northern Broadcast went silent with its ESPN Northern Michigan stations – WRSJ-FM 105.5 in Honor and WSRT-FM 106.7 in Gaylord – citing ongoing financial strain. Last week, Warren inked a deal to bring ESPN radio back starting in early March and broadcasting on the 1310 AM frequency. “We were surprised at the uproar in this town when those stations were turned off,” he says. “It seemed like another good opportunity for our business.”

Warren adds that the coming months could bring even more shifts in local radio. “This is a really hot area in the state of Michigan, and that's why you see a flurry of activity. A lot of out-of-market broadcasters want in.” In 2019, Nielsen ranked the Traverse City-Cadillac area as the 120th biggest radio market in the United States.