Chicago Radio: Suburban WCFJ Goes Dark

Fred Eychaner

Fred Eychaner’s Newsweb Radio is voluntarily giving back the license of one of its eight Chicago area radio stations to the FCC, according to Chicago Media writer Robert Feder.

WCFJ 1470 AM, a time-brokered ethnic and foreign-language station licensed to south suburban Chicago Heights, ceased broadcasting Saturday, according to Charley Gross, president of Newsweb Radio.  Newsweb a printer of ethnic and alternative newspapers in the United States, based in Chicago, Illinois.

“We are turning in the FCC license,” Gross said. “The station was not profitable.”

The 1,000-watt daytime station’s audience was too small to register in Nielsen Audio ratings. Owned by Newsweb Radio since 1998, the station first went on the air in 1963 as WMPP (“Working [for] More People’s Progress”) under Seaway Broadcasting Co. In 1989 Liberty Temple Full Gospel Church acquired the station and changed its call letters to WCFJ (“Winning Chicagoland for Jesus”).

WCFJ 1470 AM (1-Kw) Directional 

Newsweb Radio continues to operate seven other stations, including progressive talk WCPT 820 AM and WCPT 92.5 FM. Others, airing various time-brokered formats, are WNDZ 750 AM, WAIT 850 AM, WSBC 1240 AM, WCPY 92.7 FM  and WCPQ 99.9 FM.