The national “K-Love” network has made its anticipated debut on an AM station and its FM translator in the center of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
WQXO/1400 (Munising) and W249DR/97.7 (Munising) switched over on Friday, Nov. 28, as “K-Love” was in its first All-Christmas weekend of the season.
The stations had previously carried Oldies.
Separately, WQXO filed an application with the FCC on Dec. 1 to formally convert is status to non-commercial.
The format change came as WQXO/W249DR owner Great Lakes Radio, headed by Todd Noordyk, awaited formal FCC approval of its donation of the stations to K-Love Inc. (Update: the donation was approved Dec. 4.)
As noted previously, Rita Noordyk leads a non-commercial broadcaster carries “K-Love” on WSHN/89.3 (Munising-Marquette) and WCRR/88.9 (Manistique-Escanaba).
The addition of WQXO/W249DR fills in a gap in city-grade coverage between the two existing signals.
WQXO is only the fourth AM station owned by K-Love Inc., which holds nearly 1,000 FM licenses. The organization was previously known as the Educational Media Foundation.