Tag Archives: 1350 AM

Radio

WOAM only half on

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Radio station WOAM (1350 AM) has been broadcasting the past few months in an apparent effort by the owner to keep his FCC license while he tries to sell the station. There are no DJs, no commercials, and no news or weather breaks. Just easy listening music and station IDs.

I’ve listened to it a few times the past several weeks, and I’ve noticed that they don’t have their equipment hooked up properly. You see, they’re a mono station, but they play music that was originally recorded in stereo. If you’re going from stereo to mono, you need to combine the two stereo tracks into one mono track using a Y-adapter (or, alternatively, using an audio software program to combine the tracks). What WOAM is doing is just playing one of the stereo tracks and not the other.

That’s a problem — especially when they play songs from the early days of stereo recording, like songs by The Association or Simon & Garfunkel. In those early, experimental days, bands would do some crazy things by today’s standards. For instance, they might put all the percussion in the right channel and all the vocals in the left channel. So if you only hear one track and not the other, the song sounds weird at best. And WOAM plays a lot of songs that suffer from that problem.

So, WOAM station owner, while I know this is just a temporary thing and you’re losing money anyway, why not spend a couple bucks on a Y-adapter, just out of the goodness of your heart? Your listeners will appreciate it.

Radio

“Unforgettable 1350” gone but not forgotten

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Everyone knows by now that 1350 WOAM and 94.3 WPMJ have gone off the air. But they deserve a requiem nonetheless.

Although their music was syndicated, 1350 AM had no small amount of local programming. Every morning, there was Breakfast with Royce [Elliott] and Roger [Monroe]. They had a lot of special guests, and of course a lot of humor. And during the summer, they carried the Peoria Chiefs baseball games. I’ll never forget hearing them win the Midwest League championship — an unbelievable come-from-behind win in the ninth inning (naturally, they were still a Cardinals affiliate then). They carried other local sports as well.

I didn’t listen to 94.3 very much, as it was all syndicated oldies music. Occasionally I’d turn it on for a song or two. It took on the oldies format after 93.3 jettisoned their “Big Oldies” moniker. Frankly, I won’t miss this station much, but I will definitely miss 1350. It had a definite local feel to it, without being talk radio. It had a lot of variety, and I’ll miss that.

On a positive note, the paper reports that station owner Bob Kelly “said he would continue to run the Kelly Communications Co. despite the stations being off the air with the hope of eventually bringing the stations back online. ‘I’m going to work full-time on getting financing.'”

So maybe 1350 will be back again someday. Hope so.