WCTM

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WCTM were the call letters assigned to an

After the FM station was sold, Coning focused on acquiring an AM license (he had originally wanted to build an AM station, but the lack of available frequencies led him to build the FM station first). After a 12-year struggle to obtain a frequency, WCTM (1130 AM) went on the air in 1981 as a daytime-only station and picked up where the FM left off a decade earlier, playing beautiful music. The studios and transmitter were located east of Eaton in an open field behind an abandoned drive-in theater (since razed) in the rural Preble County community of Glenwood (aka "Ransom" on some online highway maps near West Alexandria, which was the station's mailing address).

Coning ran the operation by himself, using a home-built reel-to-reel automation system (a little box called a "Tel-Timer" gave the time and temperature in a computerized voice), while freelance voice-over announcers Darrel Studebaker, John Bauman (engineer) and Jim Linthicum voiced commercials, liners and announcements. The station's call letters were often said on the air to mean "We Cherish This Music".

In addition to its beautiful music format, WCTM aired farm and agricultural programming from Ed Johnson's Agri Broadcast Network (for western Ohio farmers) and Derry Brownfield's Brownfield Network (for eastern Indiana farmers), helping to earn the station its nickname, "Radio Ranch 1130." This nickname was probably inspired by Ohio country music artist Donnie Bowser and the Radio Ranch Boys, and by KWKH, a country music station in Shreveport, Louisiana which also broadcast at 1130 kHz and used the "Radio Ranch" nickname.

WCTM aired local sports for a time, along with NASCAR coverage on weekends and the syndicated "Waxworks" nostalgia/big band program hosted by Gary Hannes. WCTM was also the first Ohio radio station to affiliate with Ted Turner's CNN Radio in 1983. Later, the station aired USA Radio Network news and sports. In its final years, the "beautiful music" format was often peppered with Stan Coning's soft-spoken recollections of his early life in Eaton and people he had known.

The end of WCTM

In its last few years, WCTM operated almost as a public service. Few commercials were heard, donations were accepted to help keep the station on the air, and sign-on/sign-off times were almost entirely dependent on how long Coning could remain at the station (a typical daily sign-off was around 5 P.M., with no broadcasts at all on Sundays). During this period, a friend of Coning's with the on-air name of "John Grant" hosted weekly programs and assisted with station maintenance and operations.

Due to his failing health, which had taken the station off the air for extended periods of time, Stan Coning finally sold his little station to Town & Country Broadcasting, owner of WBZI in Xenia. WCTM signed off for the last time on June 24, 2004, an event which was covered by two Dayton TV stations. As a one-man operation with an easy-listening format, WCTM was widely regarded as the last of its kind. According to industry observer Scott Fybush, the loss of WCTM and its format marked "(the end of) the era of commercial beautiful music on American radio."

Today, the station lives on as

Tapes of WCTM, including its final day on the air, are known to exist in the aircheck collection of Clarke Ingram, a Pittsburgh radio executive who befriended Coning and was a fan of the station.

Source: Fybush.com Tower Site of the Week 6/25-7/5/04 by Scott Fybush

The WCTM callsign [1] was later used briefly in 2011 at the former WSFO, a now defunct construction permit for an FM station at 90.7 in Barrington, New Hampshire.

Much of the classic beautiful music heard on WCTM can now be heard online (and via the TuneIn app) at https://tunein.com/radio/BEAUTIFUL-INSTRUMENTALS-s156850/

See also

• WGTZ (originally WCTM-FM)
• WEDI
  (the current incarnation of AM-1130)
• Eaton, Ohio
• List of radio stations in Ohio

References

External links

• Scott Fybush's WCTM tribute page
• Official site of Classic Country WBZI, WKFI and WEDI.(with streaming audio)
• Query the FCC's AM station database for WEDI
• WEDI technical information from Radio-Locator website
• FCC History Cards for WCTM (FM)