WLMI 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 radi ...

licensed to Grand Ledge, Michigan, serving

Lansing Lansing () is the capital of the U.S. state of Michigan. It is mostly in Ingham County, although portions of the city extend west into Eaton County and north into Clinton County. The 2020 census placed the city's population at 112,644, making ...

. Owned by

Midwest Communications Midwest Communications is a Wausau, Wisconsin-based radio broadcasting company. It owns 82 radio stations located primarily within the Midwest United States, in Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Tennessee, Illinois and ...

, it broadcasts a

classic hits Classic hits is a radio format which generally includes songs from the top 40 music charts from the late 1960s to the early 2000s, with music from the 1980s serving as the core of the format. Music that was popularized by MTV in the early 198 ...

format branded as ''Cruisin 92.9''.

History

What is now WLMI began life as WCER-FM in

Charlotte, Michigan Charlotte ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 9,074. It is the county seat of Eaton County. Charlotte is in the central portion of the county, on the boundary between Eaton Township an ...

, in 1963. The station was co-owned with WCER (1390 AM, now Christian-formatted WLCM). On July 1, 1979, WCER-FM changed its calls to WMMQ, and on September 1 of that year, WMMQ separated programming from its AM sister and aired an

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, quiet ...

/sports format as ''Q92''. By the mid-1980s, WMMQ was struggling in the ratings and losing to its Lansing-based A/C competitors, and the station's owners quietly prepared a format change. On April 15, 1985, WMMQ changed to a then brand-new format called

Classic rock Classic rock is a US radio format which developed from the album-oriented rock (AOR) format in the early 1980s. In the United States, the classic rock format comprises rock music ranging generally from the mid-1960s through the mid 1990s, prim ...

, making it one of the first FM stations in the United States with such a format. The station was consulted by Fred Jacobs, revered as the "father" of the Classic Rock format, and quickly became one of the most popular stations in mid-Michigan, and Jacobs' first Classic Rock success story. After WMMQ moved to 94.9 FM on June 1, 1997, 92.7 became WVIC (94.9 was, for many years, WVIC-FM) and broadcast intermittently for the next several years. When it was on the air, WVIC aired fully automated classical music with no announcers and oddly placed legal station IDs, and with no commercials except for public-service announcements. Oddly, the station actually did show up in the Lansing Arbitron ratings during this time. From 2001 to 2005, the station was WQTX, airing sports talk as "The Ticket." Shows such as "The Sports Page" with Jack Ebling and Tom Crawford (now at crosstown WILS), "The Sports Inferno" with Mike Valenti (now at WXYT/Detroit), and "Mad Dog & Company" with David "The Mad Dog" DeMarco and longtime producer Brock Palmbos (now at crosstown WVFN) helped to push "The Ticket" ahead of crosstown rival, WVFN, in the ratings. In October 2005, WQTX flipped to

Smooth Jazz Smooth jazz is a genre of commercially-oriented crossover jazz and easy listening music that became dominant in the mid 1970s to the early 1990s. History Smooth jazz is a commercially oriented, crossover jazz which came to prominence in the 1 ...

, adopting

Jones Radio Networks Jones Radio Networks & Jones Media Group were branches of Jones International before being sold to Triton Media Group. JRN and JMN provide local radio stations with satellite-delivered formats. They also offer other services to local radio such a ...

' smooth jazz format, and changed call letters to WJZL; the Sports Talk format continued on former simulcast partner WTXQ. In April 2006, 92.1 FM abandoned the Sports Talk format for good as it flipped to

Oldies Oldies is a term for musical genres such as pop music, rock and roll, doo-wop, surf music (broadly characterized as classic rock and pop rock) from the second half of the 20th century, specifically from around the mid-1950s to the 1980s, as wel ...

, taking the WQTX calls formerly used on 92.7. WJZL eventually shifted its frequency to 92.9. Following the demise of Jones' Smooth Jazz network in September 2008, WJZL switched over to Broadcast Architecture's "Smooth Jazz Network" programming. The station operated for many months on 92.9 at reduced power until November 16, 2007, when it was able to broadcast at 5,400 watts. Until the station went to full power, its weak signal was prone to severe fading and co-channel interference from WJZQ-FM in

Cadillac, Michigan Cadillac ( ) is a city in and county seat of Wexford County in the U.S. state of Michigan. The population was 10,371 at the 2020 census, which ranks it the third most-populated city in the Northern Michigan region after Traverse City and A ...

, even into

Clinton County Clinton County may refer to: *Counties named for George Clinton, first and third Governor of New York, and later the fourth Vice President of the United States: ** Clinton County, New York **Clinton County, Ohio *Counties named for DeWitt Clinton, ...

, which is located just north of Lansing. WJZL now has a much stronger signal in the immediate Lansing area and can be heard as far as Jackson in the south,

Howell Howell may refer to: Places In the United Kingdom * Howell, Lincolnshire, England In the United States * Howell, Georgia *Howell, Evansville, a neighborhood of Evansville, Indiana * Howell, Michigan * Howell, Missouri * Howell, Utah * Howel ...

in the east, and

Hastings Hastings () is a large seaside town and borough in East Sussex on the south coast of England, east to the county town of Lewes and south east of London. The town gives its name to the Battle of Hastings, which took place to the north-west a ...

in the west. The station, along with WJXQ, WVIC, and WQTX, was sold from Rubber City Radio to

in May 2010. The station changed its call letters to WLMI in October 2010; after playing Christmas music for the holiday season, the station flipped to a locally-programmed

format on December 27, picking up the format from WQTX's impending switch to country. On April 25, 2017, Midwest Communications announced that WLMI would switch to CHR the next day as ''i92.9''. On July 31, 2020, WLMI began running liners promoting that a "revolution" would begin at noon on that day. At that time, after playing " Bang!" by AJR, the station flipped to classic hits as "Cruisin' 92.9". The first song on Cruisin' was "

Revolution In political science, a revolution (Latin: ''revolutio'', "a turn around") is a fundamental and relatively sudden change in political power and political organization which occurs when the population revolts against the government, typically due ...

" by

The Beatles The Beatles were an English rock band, formed in Liverpool in 1960, that comprised John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. They are regarded as the most influential band of all time and were integral to the developm ...

.Format Change CHR WLMI Lansing Michigan I92.9fm Becomes Cruisin 92.9fm- YouTube
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References

External links

* {{Midwest Communications LMI Radio stations established in 1963 1963 establishments in Michigan Midwest Communications radio stations Classic hits radio stations in the United States