WCNS Passes Into History With Sale to Disruptor
March 4, 2024
John Fredericks, President of Disruptor Radio
After 35 years, the heritage WCNS call letters passed into Latrobe’s radio history with its most recent sale being finalized.
Disruptor Radio, a North Carolina-based company specializing in conservative talk-formatted stations, began operating WCNS (AM 1480, FM 107.5) under a local marketing agreement (LMA) last summer. The sale was finalized on January 31st, with the adoption of a new set of call letters: WJFG.
The sale includes Apollo-licensed WXJX (AM 910, FM 98.7), which continues its simulcast of WJFG. It too changes its call letters: WJFA.
Disruptor also owns stations in the Philadelphia, Atlanta, Norfolk and Richmond markets. Company president John Fredericks also hosts a nationally-syndicated talk show weekday mornings from 6 to 10am.
WCNS was sold in 2014 after longtime owner John Longo retired and relocated to Florida. He sold the station to Laurel Highland Total Communications (LHTC) later that year. Brandon Kail, son of LHTC President Jim Kail, assumed management of WCNS and was in the process of acquiring others in West Virginia when he was diagnosed with terminal cancer in 2019.
Brandon Kail died in August of 2021. LHTC sold the stations to Steve Clendenin’s Maryland Media One in February of that year, when it became clear that he would not recover.
WJFG began broadcasting as WTRA in 1956. WJFA began broadcasting as WAVL in 1947. Both stations were separately owned for many years until LHTC acquired them in separate transactions and equipped both with FM translators. Both operated with separate formats of adult contemporary and talk, respectively, until 2018, when they began to simulcast.
It is unclear where the stations’ studios are currently located. The stations were last located along Main Street in Greensburg. However, the website www.pittsburghnewstalk.com lists a Pittsburgh mailing address.
WJFG transmits from a four-tower directional antenna array near the runway of Westmoreland County Airport in Latrobe, and WJFA transmits from a two-tower directional antenna array in Kiski Township, about a mile east of Apollo.
George Soros! No, I’m just joking, had to do it.. 🙂
I’ve listened to 910 and 1480, and both come in about the same, though I’d give the edge to 910 in signal strength and clarity, no other stations interfere with it for most of the day, where 1480 has other stations that fade in over it at times.
I think it’s good, we need a counterpoint to the mainstream media.
Another thing I’ll leave here, because I didn’t get to reply to the post about WRCT in time.
I’ve long heard that Carnegie Mellon (WRCT) had a campus station on 900 AM in their early days of broadcasting, but I’ve found so little information about it, just a few sentences and that picture with the antenna and 900 written on it. I’ve asked people who knew about college radio in the area, and they just knew that there was a station, but didn’t know more.
Anyone know who started the station, where they got the equipment, and where was the studio and transmitter set up, and was it run by the school or an independent group on campus, and what did they play on the air? What areas was it heard in, campus our surrounding area?
Thanks.
Boomer