WWRM

WWRM
City Tampa, Florida
Broadcast area Tampa Bay Area
Branding Magic 94.9
Slogan "80's, 90's, & Now"
Frequency 94.9 MHz
First air date 1970 (as WLCY-FM)
Format Adult Contemporary
ERP 97,300 watts
HAAT 470 meters
Class C
Facility ID 74200
Callsign meaning W WaRM
(after its prior nickname, "Warm 107 / Warm 94.9")
Former callsigns WLCY-FM (1970-1978)
WYNF (1978-9/29/1981)
WYNF-FM (9/29/1981-9/30/1993)
Owner Cox Radio
(Cox Radio, Inc.)
Webcast Listen Live
Website mymagic949.com

WWRM (94.9 FM) is an adult contemporary music formatted radio station serving the Tampa-St. Petersburg, Florida radio market. WWRM began on 107.3 (on what is now WXGL), but later moved to 94.9 with its soft AC format. The station evolved to more of a mainstream AC sound as Magic 94.9 by 2001, a year after joining its new sister station, WDUV (a soft AC station) in its Cox Radio ownership. The station used to play Christmas music from mid-November to December 26. The Christmas music is now played by WDUV.

Its studios are located in St. Petersburg, and the transmitter site is in Riverview.

History

Rahall Communications, owner of WLCY-AM 1380 and WLCY-TV channel 10 in St. Petersburg, signed on 94.9 in 1970 as WLCY-FM from the "Rahall Color Communications Center" on Gandy Boulevard. During the early 1970s, WLCY-FM was an automated station, airing Drake-Chenault’s "Hit Parade" and TM’s "Stereo Rock" formats.

Hoping to follow the sudden rise in popularity of local Top 40 station WRBQ-FM ("Q105") in the mid-1970s, WLCY-FM switched to live disc jockeys in 1976 with the moniker "Y95", using the whole-number frequency closest to 94.9. It soon adopted a new call sign, WYNF, a convenient shorthand for "Y-Ninety-Five".

In 1980, Taft Broadcasting bought the station and rebranded it "95FM- Florida's Best Rock". The music shifted from Top 40 to album-oriented rock, to compete with the dominant local AOR station, WQXM. WYNF's studios moved from St. Petersburg to Tampa, at 504 Reo Street (near Tampa International Airport), home of Taft's WDAE AM 1250. The change lasted less than two years, and the station was re-branded "95ynf". WYNF FM 94.9 went from playing Top 40 to AOR and calling itself "The New 95". The station was later re-branded as "95ynf". Then later on, Taft became Great American Broadcasting.

Then In 1985, Great American Broadcasting sold the 100,000 watt 95 WYNF to CBS Radio (Infinity Broadcasting) and relocated to 4th Street North in St. Petersburg at the Koger Executive Center. 95ynf dominated the Tampa bay area for AOR music. WYNF would again become a sister station to channel 10 (now WTSP) in the early 1980s, after Taft acquired Gulf Broadcasting. (Around that time, WDAE was sold to Gannett, while Taft acquired WSUN AM 620 from Plough, Inc.)

After trying out several morning teams including Nick van Cleve and Jack Strapp, and later replacing van Cleve with Ron Diaz, program director Carey Curelop paired Diaz with local comic Ron Bennington, creating the highly successful Ron and Ron morning show at WYNF in the late eighties. The show had huge ratings success and Ron & Ron known as "Radio's Bad Boys" then partnered with their agent Ross Reback to form The Ron & Ron Radio Network to own and syndicate the programming. The show's final broadcast for WYNF was on March 12, 1993. Reback became President and CEO of the newly formed network and quickly negotiated a deal to broadcast the show in Miami, FL, Orlando, FL, and Jacksonville, FL with another dozen markets soon following (including a new more lucrative deal in Tampa, FL).

In 1993, Cox Broadcasting, owners of WWRM (then at 107.3, as "Warm 107"), bought WYNF, relocating its studios back to St. Petersburg, at The Koger Center. By that point, rival WXTB, the same station that was once WQXM, had surpassed WYNF in the Arbitron ratings, eventually forcing a format change.

Logo of the radio station between 2010 and February 2012

After a short period of simulcasting WSUN's talk radio programming, Cox relocated "Warm 107" and its WWRM calls to 94.9, becoming "Warm 94.9". In the late 1990s, the station had a minor overhaul, becoming "(The New) Magic 94.9", though keeping the format and WWRM call sign. (WWRM's old frequency at 107.3 has since become WXGL.) In May 2011, after ten years of being called "The New Magic 94.9", the station dropped "The New" in their name, becoming "Magic 94.9, soft and contemporary and voted no.1 again for the most music while you work." On December 26, 2011, Magic 94.9 changed its slogan to "80's, 90's, & now."

Starting in November 2013, WWRM mixed Christmas songs with its regular format, while continuous Christmas music shifted to sister station WDUV.[1]

References

Coordinates: 27°49′12″N 82°15′40″W / 27.820°N 82.261°W / 27.820; -82.261

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 9/29/2015. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.