WQQW was a commercial daytime-only

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 ...

that was licensed to serve

Highland, Illinois Highland is a city in Madison County, Illinois, United States. The population was 9,991 at the 2020 census. Highland began as a Swiss settlement and derived its name from later German immigrants. Highland is a sister city of Sursee in Switzerl ...

, at 1510 AM, and broadcast from 1998 to 2019. The station's transmitter site was located in the town of

Pierron, Illinois Pierron is a village in Bond and Madison counties, Illinois, United States. The population was 459 at the 2020 census, down from 600 at the 2010 census. History The first post office was established at Pierron in 1870.Allan H. Keith ''Historical ...

. The station's license was revoked by the

Federal Communications Commission The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that regulates communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable across the United States. The FCC maintains jurisdicti ...

on March 20, 2020, after it was revealed that the principal ownership—Entertainment Media Trust—was set up as a shell company for a convicted felon. This license cancellation also included three other AM stations in the

Greater St. Louis Greater St. Louis is a bi-state metropolitan area that completely surrounds and includes the independent city of St. Louis, the principal city. It includes parts of both Missouri and Illinois. The city core is on the Mississippi Riverfront on t ...

metropolitan area owned by the group: KFTK (1490 AM),

KQQZ KQQZ was a commercial AM radio station that was licensed to serve Fairview Heights, Illinois, on , and broadcast from 1968 to 2020. KQQZ first broadcast in 1968 as KHAD, a station licensed to De Soto, Missouri. For its first 30 years, KHAD pr ...

and

KZQZ KZQZ was a commercial radio station that was licensed to serve St. Louis, Missouri at 1430 AM, and broadcast from 1922 to 2020. As WEB it was one of the first radio stations to have been established and licensed in the Greater St. Louis metro ...

History

Originally licensed on May 19, 1998, WINU became WDID on June 14, 2001; WDID changed to WXOZ on May 11, 2006; and finally WXOZ changed to the current WQQW on November 18, 2009. On March 4, 2019, WQQW went silent, citing a transmitter prone to turning itself off for unknown reasons and issues with the internet delivery of its programming to the transmitter site. In 2012, Mark Kern challenged the license renewals of WQQW and its sister stations, alleging that Robert Romanik, a convicted felon who is also known as the "Grim Reaper of Radio", was controlling the stations in violation of FCC rules that prohibit felons from owning broadcast stations and had arranged a local marketing agreement for one of them. On June 5, 2019, the

designated all four EMT stations' licenses for hearing, finding that Romanik had established EMT and provided all the funding to acquire its stations even though he was not a party to any FCC applications. The station's license was cancelled on March 20, 2020.

FCC Auction 109

The FCC announced on February 8, 2021, that the former EMT-licensed AM allocations in the St. Louis market, including WQQW's frequency, would go up for auction on July 27, 2021. The day after the auction process started, blank applications for new stations, using the facility ID numbers for WQQW and KFTK, appeared in the FCC database. No bids were received for any of the four frequencies during the eight-day auction.

References

External links

Radio stations established in 1998 1998 establishments in Illinois QQW Radio stations disestablished in 2020 2020 disestablishments in Illinois Defunct radio stations in the United States QQW QQW {{Illinois-radio-station-stub