Other people have lost stations they love, too. These are their tribute pages. Some of them may have formats that are not compatible with Christians - this link page is not responsible for contents of these tribute pages - and does not necessarily endorse them.

What an AM dial it would still be - if the classic stations listed here were still on the air! Alas - the era is gone forever. The last holdout - KOMA Oklahoma City - has gone to the piddle, drivel, and swill of talk radio. But the Mighty 1190 lives again - not as KLIF, but at least with music!

Radio format changes are a fact of life. Sometimes a station simply wants a new direction, but most of the time it is about money. Station owners, in an effort to fine-tune and maximize profits, will sometimes change the format of a successful station, heedless of its place in music history - or the loyalty of the listeners. WCIE certainly falls into that category, as do the majority of the great 50,000 watt AM music stations of decades past.

In some cases, however, stations have had to deal with hostile governments. KOIL, CHUM, CKLW, and XEROK fall into this category. WCIE has more in common with this group than it ought to - as the ownership consistently lacked the vision to see the impact they were having on the listeners. They were openly hostile to the format, and were finally successful in shutting it down.

A format change, particularly by a popular station, leaves a lot of its fans without their favorite station and the music that they loved. The fans feel betrayed, angry at the station ownership for taking away "their" station, and some of them have remained so loyal through the years that they have developed tribute sites for the stations that they loved. The fans of WCIE can identify with your feelings.

For Christian young people (and young at heart) in the Tampa Bay area, WCIE meant as much as the AM radio greats of decades ago meant to those who made some of these tribute pages. Remember the good times and great music. I cannot offer you much hope of a new WCIE.

A lot of you that access this page are looking only for the web links of the classic AM's, and do not care about WCIE or its format. I can offer you hope! These stations of the past are gone, but AM music is making a comeback on new stations. There is a new "top 40" network - Radio Disney. Targeted at children, they play a very listenable mix of "oldies" and "top 40", with a few dumb children's songs mixed in from time to time. The concept of a network means that every radio Disney station plays the network feed, which may be objectionable to those that remember the local stations, but wouldn't it have been nice in the 60's to hear WABC instead of a local imitation? Most of those stations were listening to WABC and imitating it anyway. I got my start listening to KCRS 550 AM Midland, and soon discovered that they were imitating KLIF 1190 AM Dallas. As I learned how to receive more and more distant stations, I discovered WLS Chicago and finally discovered WABC 770 AM New York - after I learned how to make directional loop antennas that would reject nearby KOB 770 AM Albuquerque. Radio Disney does have some local content and local announcers. I think their concept is a good one. Today's kids are more sophisticated and into "top 40" sooner than we were, so Radio Disney is producing a new generation of kids who will think of AM as a viable source of music. And guess what? Radio Disney now owns one of the classic AM's above - KOIL in Omaha. And perhaps as a tribute to its history, they left the historic KOIL call letters alone - which is quite different from their usual practice of re-naming the station to have some Disney association. Way to go - Disney! AM top 40, back on KOIL!

As more and more niche formats move to AM - being forced off of FM, the demand will increase for better AM receivers, leading to a rebirth of the AM band. I have a page that includes tips on AM reception that you can use to receive the first of this new generation of AM greats.

Main Page

My Story, and a History of WCIE

FAQ

The end of the line for WCIE

WCIE Memorabilia

Links to other radio station tribute pages