WJBC (1230

kHz The hertz (symbol: Hz) is the unit of frequency in the International System of Units (SI), equivalent to one event (or cycle) per second. The hertz is an SI derived unit whose expression in terms of SI base units is s−1, meaning that on ...

) is a

commercial Commercial may refer to: * a dose of advertising conveyed through media (such as - for example - radio or television) ** Radio advertisement ** Television advertisement * (adjective for:) commerce, a system of voluntary exchange of products and s ...

radio station Radio broadcasting is transmission of audio (sound), sometimes with related metadata, by radio waves to radio receivers belonging to a public audience. In terrestrial radio broadcasting the radio waves are broadcast by a land-based radio ...

licensed A license (or licence) is an official permission or permit to do, use, or own something (as well as the document of that permission or permit). A license is granted by a party (licensor) to another party (licensee) as an element of an agreeme ...

Bloomington, Illinois Bloomington is a city and the county seat of McLean County, Illinois, United States. It is adjacent to the town of Normal, and is the more populous of the two principal municipalities of the Bloomington–Normal metropolitan area. Bloomington ...

, and serving the Bloomington-Normal region. It broadcasts a

news/talk Talk radio is a radio format containing discussion about topical issues and consisting entirely or almost entirely of original spoken word content rather than outside music. Most shows are regularly hosted by a single individual, and often featur ...

radio format A radio format or programming format (not to be confused with broadcast programming) describes the overall content broadcast on a radio station. The radio format emerged mainly in the United States in the 1950s, at a time when Radio broadcasting, ...

and is owned by

Cumulus Media Cumulus Media, Inc. is an American broadcasting company and is the third largest owner and operator of AM and FM radio stations in the United States behind Audacy and iHeartMedia. As of June 2019, Cumulus lists ownership of 428 stations in 87 ...

, part of a five-station cluster. It has two full-time news anchors and two part-time reporters. The station calls itself "The Voice of Central Illinois". WJBC is powered at 1,000

watt The watt (symbol: W) is the unit of power or radiant flux in the International System of Units (SI), equal to 1 joule per second or 1 kg⋅m2⋅s−3. It is used to quantify the rate of energy transfer. The watt is named after James Wa ...

s, using a

non-directional antenna In radio communication, an omnidirectional antenna is a class of antenna which radiates equal radio power in all directions perpendicular to an axis (azimuthal directions), with power varying with angle to the axis (elevation angle), declining ...

. The

transmitter In electronics and telecommunications, a radio transmitter or just transmitter is an electronic device which produces radio waves with an antenna (radio), antenna. The transmitter itself generates a radio frequency alternating current, which i ...

is on Greenwood Avenue at West Hamilton Road in Bloomington. Programming is also heard on 50-watt

FM translator A broadcast relay station, also known as a satellite station, relay transmitter, broadcast translator (U.S.), re-broadcaster (Canada), repeater (two-way radio) or complementary station (Mexico), is a broadcast transmitter which repeats (or tran ...

W271DC at 102.1

MHz The hertz (symbol: Hz) is the unit of frequency in the International System of Units (SI), equivalent to one event (or cycle) per second. The hertz is an SI derived unit whose expression in terms of SI base units is s−1, meaning that one he ...

Programming

Talk

WJBC is live and local 6am to 6pm weekdays. In morning

drive time Drive time is the daypart in which radio broadcasters can reach the most people who listen to car radios while driving, usually to and from work, or on public transportation. Drive-time periods are when the number of radio listeners in this c ...

, Scott Miller is heard. In middays, Neil Doyle and Illinois RFD hosts. 12:30pm – 3:00pm: Todd Wineburner, 3:00pm – 4:00pm: RFD Profit Watch, 4:00pm – 6:00pm: Blake Haas, 6:00pm – 9:00pm: John Batchelor, 9:00pm – Midnight: American Stories " idnight – 4:00amCoast to Coast AM with

George Noory George Ralph Noory (born June 4, 1950) is an American radio talk show host. Since January 2003, Noory has been the weekday host of the late-night radio talk show ''Coast to Coast AM''. The program is syndicated to hundreds of radio stations in ...

" and 4:00am – 5:00am: First Light." On weekends, WJBC has shows on home repair, real estate, technology and travel. Weekend hosts include

Kim Komando Kimberly Ann Komando (born 1967) is the host of two daily radio shows and one weekend radio show about consumer technology. On her weekly call-in show, she provides advice about technology gadgets, websites, smartphone apps, and internet security. ...

and

Chris Plante Chris Plante (born December 12, 1959) is a syndicated radio talk show host, based at WMAL Radio in Washington D.C., and heard on the Westwood One Network. He is also a frequent guest on both Fox News and Fox Business. Chris Plante is the st ...

. Most hours begin with

CBS Radio News CBS News Radio, formerly known as CBS Radio News and historically known as the CBS Radio Network, is a radio network that provides news to more than 1,000 radio stations throughout the United States. The network is owned by Paramount Global. It ...

. A station staff supplies local news, sports and agricultural reports.

Sports

WJBC has been the longtime home to the

Illinois State Redbirds The Illinois State Redbirds are the athletic teams that represent Illinois State University in Normal, Illinois. Teams play at the NCAA Division I level ( FCS in football). The football team competes in the Missouri Valley Football Conference wh ...

, as well as local high school sports. It also carries

Chicago Bears The Chicago Bears are a professional American football team based in Chicago. The Bears compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) North division. The Bears have won nine NF ...

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly c ...

and

St. Louis Cardinals The St. Louis Cardinals are an American professional baseball team based in St. Louis. The Cardinals compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the National League (NL) Central division. Since the 2006 season, the Cardinals hav ...

baseball Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each, taking turns batting and fielding. The game occurs over the course of several plays, with each play generally beginning when a player on the fielding tea ...

. On occasion, WJBC has also broadcast the

Central Illinois Flying Aces The Central Illinois Flying Aces were a Tier I junior hockey team that played as a member of the United States Hockey League. Based in Bloomington, Illinois, the Flying Aces played their home games at the Grossinger Motors Arena, located in down ...

and the

Bloomington Edge The Bloomington Edge was a professional indoor football team based in Bloomington, Illinois. While it was in operation, the team hosted home games at Grossinger Motors Arena. Originally named the Bloomington Extreme, the team was a member of Unit ...

History

Early Years

The station

signed on Signing may refer to: * Using sign language * Signature A signature (; from la, signare, "to sign") is a handwritten (and often stylized) depiction of someone's name, nickname, or even a simple "X" or other mark that a person writes on do ...

in . It was originally based in

La Salle, Illinois LaSalle is a city in LaSalle County, Illinois, United States, located at the intersection of Interstates 39 and 80. It is part of the Ottawa, IL Micropolitan Statistical Area. Originally platted in 1837 over , the city's boundaries have grown t ...

and was powered at 100

s on 1280

. Its call letters were apparently assigned arbitrarily during the AM radio expansion era of the 1920s. For a while it adopted the

mnemonic A mnemonic ( ) device, or memory device, is any learning technique that aids information retention or retrieval (remembering) in the human memory for better understanding. Mnemonics make use of elaborative encoding, retrieval cues, and imag ...

slogan "Where Jazz Becomes Classic". The station was originally at the Hummer Furniture Store, then at the Kaskaskia Hotel. During the years in LaSalle, it moved to 1320 kHz, then 1200 kHz.

Move to Bloomington

The

Great Depression The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagio ...

eventually closed both the companies backing the station in LaSalle, and the owner of Hummer Furniture owner moved the station to Bloomington-Normal. Malcolm Magregor bought WJBC from Kaskaskia Broadcasting Company effective April 1, 1933. At that time, WJBC was still a 100-watt station, sharing time with WJBL in

Decatur, Illinois Decatur ( ) is the largest city and the county seat of Macon County in the U.S. state of Illinois, with a population of 70,522 as of the 2020 Census. The city was founded in 1829 and is situated along the Sangamon River and Lake Decatur in Ce ...

New Facilities

On September 11, 1934, WJBC began transmitting from its new facilities, making it the first radio station in Bloomington. The transmitter was in

Normal Normal(s) or The Normal(s) may refer to: Film and television * ''Normal'' (2003 film), starring Jessica Lange and Tom Wilkinson * ''Normal'' (2007 film), starring Carrie-Anne Moss, Kevin Zegers, Callum Keith Rennie, and Andrew Airlie * ''Norma ...

and its main studio was at

Illinois Wesleyan University Illinois ( ) is a state in the Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolitan areas include, Peoria and Rockfor ...

in Bloomington. Other studios were at Illinois State Normal School and the

Illinois Farm Bureau The Illinois Farm Bureau (IFB) is a nonprofit U.S. organization controlled by farmers who join the IFB through one of the 96 county Farm Bureaus in Illinois. The organization's legal name is the Illinois Agricultural Association. The IFB was f ...

. At first it was only on the air a few hours a day, with eight daily newscasts, weather twice a day, and the Western Union time announced at the top of each hour. For much of the 1940s and 50s, WJBC was first an

NBC Blue Network The Blue Network (previously known as the NBC Blue Network) was the on-air name of a now defunct American Commercial broadcasting, radio network, which broadcast from 1927 through 1945. Beginning as one of the two radio networks owned by the N ...

affiliate, then an ABC Radio

Network affiliate In the broadcasting industry (particularly in North America, and even more in the United States), a network affiliate or affiliated station is a local broadcaster, owned by a company other than the owner of the network, which carries some or a ...

. It carried a line up of dramas, comedies, news, sports and other programs during the "

Golden Age of Radio The Golden Age of Radio, also known as the old-time radio (OTR) era, was an era of radio in the United States where it was the dominant electronic home entertainment, entertainment medium. It began with the birth of commercial radio broadcastin ...

." It was owned by the Bloomington Broadcasting Company, which also put an FM station on the air in 1947, 101.5 WJBC-FM (now

WBNQ WBNQ (101.5 FM) is the most powerful FM radio station in McLean County, Illinois, United States, broadcasting on at 50,000 watts of effective radiated power. It has had a contemporary hit radio music format since 1975. History WBNQ first signe ...

). The two stations mostly

simulcast Simulcast (a portmanteau of simultaneous broadcast) is the broadcasting of programmes/programs or events across more than one resolution, bitrate or medium, or more than one service on the same medium, at exactly the same time (that is, simultane ...

for the FM station's first two decades on the air.

Rev. R.J. Zehr

On the morning of August 25, 1971, the station broadcast the last radio program of the Reverend R.J. Zehr, who died later that morning. Zehr's first broadcast on the station was on a Sunday in October 1934; shortly thereafter, he was given a daily slot, which he continued - without missing a day - until the mid-1960s. Almost all of Zehr's broadcasts were live, not prerecorded. In 1949, he began doing the program from his house, via telephone. His program's time slot varied over the years, but normally aired between 5:00 a.m. and 6:30 a.m., and lasted 15 to 30 minutes. The audio tape cartridge machine, which fundamentally changed the way radio stations played commercials and music on air, was developed at WJBC in 1959. Ted Bailey (then Chief Engineer of WJBC) and staff engineer Jack Jenkins developed the ATC (Automatic Tape Control) machine. A joint patent was granted to Bailey, Jenkins and Nolte (station manager of WJBC) as inventors.

Cumulus Media

On April 30, 2012, Townsquare Media announced that it was selling the station to

. The assignment of the station's license to Cumulus was consummated on July 31, 2012. In 2005, and again in 2009, the station won the Marconi Award from the National Association of Broadcasters for Best Small Market Radio Station in the United States."2005 Marconi Radio Award Winners"
National Association of Broadcasters, retrieved April 14, 2008 WJBC has won several

Edward R. Murrow Awards The Edward R. Murrow Award may refer to one of several awards named after American journalist Edward R. Murrow: * Edward R. Murrow Award (Corporation for Public Broadcasting), given out to individuals in public radio since 1977 * Edward Murrow Awa ...

for its local news coverage, as well as several Illinois Silver Dome Awards.

Personalities

Current

*Neil Doyle *Blake Haas *Scott Miller *Todd Wineburner

Former

*Denny Adkins *Bob Arya *Bones Bach *Marla Behrends *Ken Behrens *Nancy Blair *Keith Blankenship *Mike Bradd *Chris Brathwaite *Dara Brockmeier *Jim Browne *Adam "Cha-Cha" Chandler *Jim Cheney *Craig Collins *Elizabeth Estes Cooper *Sarah Curtis *L.A. Decker *Ryan Denham *Mark Dennis *Zach Dietmeier *Paul Dunn *Jim Durham *Karen Erks *John Fitzgerald *Jim Fitzpatrick *Keith Gottschalk *Lee Hall *TJ Hart *Cameron D. James *Terry James *Mark Johnson *Rob Kass *Willis Kern *Art Kimball *Scott Laughlin *Tim Lewis *Dick Luedke *Gene Lyle *Stacy Marshall *R.C. McBride *Nick McClintock *Amy Meyer *Paul Morello *Don Munson *Katherine Murphy *Lori Nelson *Don Newberg *Adam Nielsen *Royal Norman *Don Norton *Howard Packowitz *Zach Parcell *Stephanie Pawlowski *Patti Penn *L.P. Phillips *Red Pitcher *Joe Ragusa *Colleen Reynolds *Scott Robbins *Daune Robinson *Chris Rongey *Ron Ross *Scott Ross *Stew Salowitz *Jim Sauers *J.D. Scott *Art Sechrest *Alan Sender *Harvey J. Steele *Adam Studzinski *Dan Swaney *Dick Templeton *Steve Vogel *Bill Walberg *Beth Whisman *Larry Whittaker *Todd Wineburner *Lyle Wood

References

External links

WJBC.com
— official website {{Authority control JBC LaSalle County, Illinois News and talk radio stations in the United States Radio stations established in 1925 Cumulus Media radio stations