WLCO (1530 AM) is a

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 ...

broadcasting a classic rock format, as a simulcast of

WQUS WQUS (103.1 FM, "U.S. 103.1") is a commercial FM radio station licensed to Lapeer, Michigan, and broadcasting a classic rock radio format. It is owned by Townsquare Media and the home of two local sports teams: the Ontario Hockey League's Flint ...

103.1 FM Lapeer. Licensed to

Lapeer, Michigan Lapeer ( ') is a City (Michigan), city in the U.S. state of Michigan and is the county seat of Lapeer County, Michigan, Lapeer County. As of the United States Census, 2010, 2010 census, the city population was 8,841. Most of the city was incorporat ...

, it first began broadcasting under the WTHM call sign in 1962. Until December 2019, it broadcast a

country music Country (also called country and western) is a genre of popular music that originated in the Southern and Southwestern United States in the early 1920s. It primarily derives from blues, church music such as Southern gospel and spirituals, ...

format using Westwood One's

Real Country Real Country is a 24-hour radio format produced by Westwood One. Real Country is marketed at the demographic of men aged 35 to 64. Its programming consists of a fairly broad playlist of "Today's Stars and the Legends." Classic country is the st ...

, which combines

classic country Classic country is a music radio format that specializes in playing mainstream country and western music hits from past decades. Repertoire The radio format specializes in hits from the 1950s through the early 1980s, and focus primarily on innov ...

favorites with select current titles. Prior to that, as WLSP, the station had aired satellite-fed adult standards from ABC (

Timeless Classics Timeless was a 24-hour satellite music service of Citadel Media (through Citadel Broadcasting). It has distributed a mix of soft oldies and adult standards to radio stations around the United States. It was a combination of two former formats: go ...

), and, prior to that, Talk and Sports formats. WTHM first went on the air November 16, 1962, adding an FM sister station on 103.1 in 1968. The WTHM call letters are derived from THuMb indicating that the signal covers

the Thumb The Thumb is a region and a peninsula of the U.S. state of Michigan, so named because the Lower Peninsula is shaped like a mitten. The Thumb area is generally considered to be in the Central Michigan region, east of the Tri-Cities and north of M ...

region of Michigan. WTHM-AM/FM was a full-service station featuring MOR/

adult contemporary Adult contemporary music (AC) is a form of radio-played popular music, ranging from 1960s vocal and 1970s soft rock music to predominantly ballad-heavy music of the present day, with varying degrees of easy listening, pop, soul, R&B, quie ...

music. Later on the call letters on both AM and FM were switched to WDEY; the music format remained AC. WDEY-AM/FM had been owned for many years by James Sommerville, who sold both to Covenant Communications in 1991. WDEY switched to a country format as "Country Gold" with the WWGZ calls in the early 1990s, before adopting an all-sports format and the new call letters WLSP in 1994. Both WLSP and WRXF-FM were sold in December 2001 to Regent Communications (now

Townsquare Media Townsquare Media, Inc. (formerly Regent Communications until 2010) is an American radio network and media company based in Purchase, New York. The company started in radio and expanded into digital media toward the end of the 2000s, starting wi ...

) for $1.3 million. Both stations then moved from their longtime location at 286 West Nepessing Street in Lapeer to join their new Regent affiliate stations at G-3338 East Bristol Road in the Flint suburb of Burton. WLSP dropped sports in 2002 for a talk format featuring programming from the Michigan Talk Radio Network, before switching to adult standards as "Unforgettable 1530" (using ABC Radio's " Stardust" format) in January 2004. The station adopted the "Real Country" format and WLCO calls on March 1, 2007. On December 2, 2019, WLCO fell silent due to an equipment failure at the station's transmitter site. It returned to the air by September 20, 2020 simulcasting the classic rock format of sister station WQUS. It operates from local sunrise to local sunset to protect

Clear-channel station A clear-channel station is an AM broadcasting, AM radio station in North America that has the highest protection from Interference (communication), interference from other stations, particularly concerning night-time skywave propagation. The syste ...

WCKY in

Cincinnati, Ohio Cincinnati ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Hamilton County. Settled in 1788, the city is located at the northern side of the confluence of the Licking and Ohio rivers, the latter of which marks the state line wit ...

. Effective March 3, 2022, Townsquare Media sold WLCO to

Smile FM Smile FM is a network of non-commercial, contemporary Christian radio stations owned by Superior Communications, a nonprofit organization. Most programming originates from studios in Williamston, Michigan (just east of Lansing) and is relayed (wi ...

for $172,500.

References

Michiguide.com - WLCO History

External links

LCO Classic rock radio stations in the United States Radio stations established in 1962 1962 establishments in Michigan LCO {{Michigan-radio-station-stub