WILS

WILS (1320 AM) is a commercial news/talk radio station in Lansing, Michigan. WILS is owned by MacDonald Broadcasting and features a local news department and a mixture of local and national talk personalities.

WILS is powered at 25,000 watts by day. But to protect other stations on AM 1320, it reduces power to 1,900 watts at night. It uses a directional antenna day and night. The transmitter is located off North Green Road in Dimondale.

Programming

WILS is home to the locally produced "Morning Wakeup with Dave Akerly." It is heard weekdays, focusing on local issues and personalities, including politics and business. Akerly is a former Lansing TV news host. Syndicated talk shows round out the rest of the weekday schedule: Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Jim Bohannon, Lars Larson, Dennis Prager, Coast to Coast AM and First Light. Weekends include shows on money, health, real estate and technology. Syndicated shows from Kim Komando, Clark Howard and Leo Laporte are heard. Some weekend hours are paid brokered programming. Most hours begin with world and national news from Fox News Radio.

WILS's talk radio rival is Townsquare Media's (formerly Cumulus Media) WJIM AM 1240, also licensed to Lansing. WJIM was WILS's main competitor when both were Top 40 stations in the 1960s and 70s. In 2013, WJIM dropped Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck, with both shows now on the WILS schedule.

History

WILS signed on February 19, 1947, as a daytimer at 1430 kHz with 500 watts of power, and required to go off the air at night. The transmitter for the station was located on East Mount Hope avenue, with studios located in downtown Lansing at Saginaw and North Washington.

In March 1950, the station moved to 1320 kHz and increased power to 1,000 watts with a directional antenna array located at 600 W. Cavanaugh Road. In 1952, the Federal Communications Commission granted WILS to up its power once again to 5,000 daytime and 1,000 watts nighttime using separate directional arrays. In 1966, the studios were moved from downtown to the Cavanaugh Road site, where they remain today.

The Lansing Broadcasting Company, original owners of WILS, made two attempts to enter the world of television. The first was an unsuccessful UHF station, WILS-TV, which began broadcasts in 1953; a year later, the company leased it to another group, under which it operated as WTOM-TV until its 1956 demise. By that time, WILS was chasing a VHF allotment to Parma and Onondaga, proposing to share time with a station to be run by Michigan State University. WILS's second and more successful station, WILX-TV channel 10, went on the air March 15, 1959; it was owned by Jackson Telecasters, a company in which Lansing Broadcasting owned a 50 percent stake, along with WJCO radio (AM 1510, now WJKN).

WILS was a popular Top 40 music station in Lansing during the 1960s and 1970s. One popular WILS personality during the '60s Top 40 era was John Records Landecker, who later went on to great popularity at WLS in Chicago, WPHR in Cleveland, and CFTR in Toronto. Timmy O' Toole, another popular Chicago radio personality worked at WILS from 1969 to 1971 before he joins WLUP in 1977. He currently does Weekends on True Oldies 94.7 in Chicago.WLS FM
/ref> WILS was a fully staffed live radio station until January 17, 1984, when the station switched to mostly automation (the original automated format was Drake-Chenault's "Hitparade", a Big Band/Nostalgia format) and was known as ''Hometown Radio 1320''.

The WILS call sign was also shared with a sister station at 101.7 FM (now WHZZ). From 1967 to 1972, the WILS-AM-FM simulcast the top-40 format. In 1972, WILS-FM launched a country music format. However Jerry Marshall's morning show which originated on WILS-AM continued to be heard on the FM as well. Then three years later in 1975, WILS-FM returned to a twelve hour simulcast of the AM station in the daytime, followed by 6 hours of progressive rock in the evenings and jazz overnight. The rock format was so popular that WILS-FM completely broke away from the AM station in 1978. The station was dubbed ''Rockradio WILS 101 FM''. An ownership change in 1983 would bring the end of WILS 101 FM, with the FM flipping to adult contemporary as ''The New WILS FM 102''. (See WHZZ for further history on the former WILS-FM 101.7.)

WILS was purchased by MacDonald Broadcasting, owner of several other stations in the Saginaw and Traverse City markets. The station switched briefly to a country music format (simulcast with WILS-FM) in 1992, and then flipped to Adult Standards in 1993. It was known as ''Unforgettable 1320'' and was an affiliate of ABC Radio's satellite-delivered adult standards/ MOR music package known as "Timeless Classics" (formerly "Stardust"). The station had had this format since the early 1990s and was quite successful in the ratings with it. The Timeless Favorites format moved to sister WXLA 1180 AM after that station was purchased by MacDonald Broadcasting; WILS and WXLA essentially simulcast each other with separate IDs and imaging until 2006. 1320 WILS changed its format to news and talk radio, with the slogan ''More Stimulating Talk Radio'' airing personalities such as Laura Ingram, Clark Howard, Dennis Miller, and Michael Savage. Local personalities included then morning show host Walt Sorg, followed by Chris Holman, Tony Conley and since 2015 former WLNS-TV primary news anchor Dave Akerly with his Morning Wake Up, weekdays 6-9 a.m. Sports talk show host Jack Ebling was an afternoon fixture on WILS before moving to WQTX. In 2010, the station changed its slogan to the current ''More Compelling Talk Radio'' moniker.

On January 25, 2008, WILS turned on their new Windsor Township transmitter and became the most powerful AM station in Lansing. The new 25 kW daytime signal covers much of Mid-Michigan, and be easily received as far away as Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, Mt. Pleasant, and Jackson. The station can even be heard in portions of northern Ohio and Indiana. The directional pattern of WILS is limited to the east to avoid adjacent channel interference with WTRX 1330 in Flint. The new 1.9 kW four tower nighttime array provides better coverage to the immediate Lansing, Charlotte, Grand Ledge, and DeWitt areas.

References

External links

Michiguide.com - WILS History1320-WILS-AM - More Compelling Talk Radio - Live and LansingFCC History Cards for WILS

{{News/Talk Radio Stations in Michigan

ILS
Radio stations established in 1947
1947 establishments in Michigan