Cleveland Radio: 'Rock' Returns To 1260 AM

Radio Disney, whose nationally programmed pop-rock music has aired since 1998 on 1260 AM as WWMK, has gone silent. Replacing it, on the signal whose incarnations have included WDOK, WIXY and WBBG, will be the religious talk programming of WCCR, for Cleveland Catholic Radio, branded as "The Rock."

According to cleveland.com, the new owner is St. Peter the Rock Media, a local nonprofit "lay apostolate" formed almost two years ago with the goal of launching a Catholic station. Local Attorney Jerry Monroe leads a board of directors that includes a retired NASA scientist, the Cleveland-based marketing head of the nonprofit EWTN media company and longtime broadcaster Dick Russ.

Monroe expects the station's on-air debut will be at 3 p.m. Monday.

After seeing a majority of Radio Disney's young audience move to such platforms as smartphone apps to listen and even watch, the company decided to switch the service to digital distribution. The company last year put 23 of its 24 Radio Disney stations up for sale, keeping only flagship KDIS-AM in Los Angeles.

The sell-off represented opportunity for St. Peter the Rock Media, which this week completed the $895,000 purchase of AM/1260 that includes its 5-antenna transmitter array on 20 acres in Brecksville.

With a 10,000-watt daytime signal and 5,000 watts at night, the Cleveland station has a potential reach of 2.4 million listeners, of whom 800,000 are Catholic.