Posted by OWOW on April 09, 2009 at 14:07:35:
GM Keith Middleton confirmed on the air yesterday that WCGO will cease broadcasting. He stated this would be the last week for the station. I wish I was wrong. I know quite a few older people who prefer this format to a traditional oldies format.
I think it's another sad commentary on radio. Kovas killed off WKKD, WMCW, and now WCGO, so they could boost the signal of WONX AM 1590 in Evanston. They got rid of of three local stations, which at one time served their communities well, to expand the reach of another cookie-cutter, brokered ethnic format.
I hope that another station in Chicago will pick up this type of format. A great station for this would be AM 1470 WCFJ, they only broker about 20% of their time currently and fill the rest of the time with a wide variety of music, a lot of the music is similar to what WCGO plays. They serve almost the same area as WCGO, as they are also based in Chicago Heights. WCGO had a few very loyal advertisers which would probably shift over to WCFJ, if given the opportunity. This probably won't happen, but, why not
make some money off the station instead of none during the non-brokered hours. I may be wrong, but, don't they still have to pay all the fees on the music their playing, even though they are not making any money off of it?