The Saturday Aircheck

The Best Of 1220 WGAR, Cleveland 1976



With the demise of network radio in the 1950s, WGAR tried various music formats, settling into an adult contemporary format in the 1960s. Don Imus did a stint at WGAR as a morning drive personality from 1970 to 1971 before moving on to WNBC in New York. (He returned to Cleveland in 1979 to do afternoons on WHK.)

Imus was replaced in 1972 by John Lanigan who had a very successful run as the morning man until he left for a Florida station on February 9, 1984. (In 1985 John Lanigan returned to Cleveland and went to work at WMJI, using much of the material he developed at WGAR.)

WGAR abandoned its adult contemporary format for a country music format on July 15, 1984. WGAR soon simulcast the country music format with its FM sister station, WGAR-FM, starting in 1986.

By 1990, WGAR was sold off to Douglas Broadcasting, and it changed its call sign to WKNR-adopting a sports/talk format-while WGAR-FM assumed the WGAR identity (as allowed by the FCC regulations at the time.)

WKNR maintained studios at the 1220-AM transmitter site in Broadview Heights-which were used by WGAR (AM) since the early 1970s, while WGAR-FM moved to new studios in nearby Independence, Ohio.

In January 1998, WKNR was sold to Jacor Communications, but were forced to spin it off to Capstar that very same August as a condition of the Jacor-Nationwide Communications merger - which ironically took WGAR-FM under the Jacor umbrella. Then, Capstar merged with Chancellor Media-who owned six other stations in the market-to form AMFM, Inc. in 1999.

When AMFM merged with Clear Channel in August 2000, WKNR was spun off again, this time to Salem Communications. And then, Salem moved WKNR to 850 kHz - formerly home to WRMR and earlier, WJW (AM) - in the July 2001 Great Cleveland Frequency Swap. WHK's programming and call letters moved to 1220 kHz in that same swap, but changed again to WHKW in 2005 when the WHK calls moved back to 1420 kHz following Salem's re-acquisition of that frequency.

Following the move, WKNR still broadcast from its studios at the former WGAR (AM) transmitter site (currently in use by WHKW), which were officially vacated on October 29, 2007, ending 30 years of near-continuous use.

Source: wikipedia

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