The only commercial FM radio station in Cook County, Minnesota, has returned its license.
Shire & Shore Communications submitted a cancellation application for WFNX/95.3 (Grand Marais) on Jan. 23. The FCC formally canceled the station’s license and deleted its callsign on Jan. 25.
WFNX had been the only commercial radio station on Minnesota’s North Shore. The sparsely-populated scenic region between Duluth and Thunder Bay is a popular tourist destination.
95.3 had transmitted with 63kW at 209 meters above average terrain (class C1) from a tower near the popular Lutsen ski area, delivering a strong signal from Silver Bay to Hovland and reception across Lake Superior along parts of the Wisconsin and Michigan shorelines.
The station spent most of its life rebroadcasting other stations, with two attempts at Adult Alternative formats in recent years.
Eclectic Enterprises first signed on 95.3 as WXXZ in 1999. Three public radio stations also launched in Grand Marais between 1998 and 2002, with the four stations giving much of Cook County their first strong radio signals.
At first, WXXZ rebroadcast the Modern Adult Contemporary format of “92.1 Kiss FM” (WWAX Hermantown-Duluth) along with new stations in Babbitt and Deer River.
In 2001, WXXZ and the other stations switched to a rebroadcast of Classic Rock outlet KQDS-FM/94.9 (Duluth), which ended up being 95.3’s station’s longest-running format.
In 2017, Aurora Broadcasting purchased WXXZ and KAOD/106.7 (Babbitt), relaunching them early 2018 with an Adult Alternative format as WVVE/95.3 and KZJZ/106.7.
The WVVE license was transferred to co-owned Shire and Shore later in 2018, and KZJZ was sold to Real Presence Radio.
In the ensuing years, WVVE saw several periods of silence and low-power operation due to technical difficulties. It rebroadcast the Classic Hits format of WHRY/1450 (Hurley, WI-Ironwood, MI) for a year starting in late 2019.
Later, it relaunched an Adult Alternative format as “The Otter” WFNX in 2021.
The station again went silent in 2022.
The FCC had approved three separate applications to transfer the station’s license in the last five years, but none of the deals closed.
The deletion of WFNX’s license means the allotment for a class C1 station on 95.3 in Grand Marais may be put up for FCC auction at a future date.