WRKZ - radio artifact

A brand name containing the number "107" might normally be assumed to be at 107.1. But in this case Z-107 was actually 106.7 WRKZ-FM in Elizabethtown, PA. At least it actually contains a "Z". The station is no more. The callsign today resides in Columbus, OH on 99.7 with the brand name The Blitz. I also also found a pin online for our WRKZ with the tag line "Country Fun" that may also have been the name of an event. It's hard to tell now, many years later. 

I found a type of radio artifact which is normally lost. It's a coupon book, clearly a radio station give away. These sort of items are almost always thrown away when they expire or get used, so it's unusual to see one intact. Coupons also have the advantage of expiration dates; providing very specific dating. The dates here are given in October and December of 1985. The Hennigans free dinner coupon alone expires in 1986. The Burger King coupons have no expiration, but good luck using them now, 40 years later. 

106.7 in Elizabethtown today is WWKL, a Rhythmic AC with an incongruous "Hot" branding. Notably it's no longer based in Elizabethtown. Today the city of license is actually in Hershey, PA; the infamous hometown of very bad chocolate. The strange thing is that Hershey isn't really a town. It's an unincorporated community in the Harrisburg metro. I wouldn't have expected the FCC to permit that as a city of license, but there it is. The move was under 10 miles but it takes them from Lancaster county to Dauphin county and thus, more firmly in the Harrisburg market. 

From an engineering point of view the move had to be a challenge. They're boxed in by short spacing.  WWKL is short spaced to four other class B stations in the region, which makes it's move to Harrisburg very odd : co-channel 106.7 WJFK in Manassas, VA and WLTW in NYC, and on the first adjacent 106.5 WWMX in Baltimore, and WCFT in in Bloomsburg, PA.

As you can see in the image above, even the colorful map they provided split the difference; showing Harrisburg in the middle, Hershey and Lebanon off to the right, then Carlisle and Gettysburg off to the left. York and Lancaster both are noted in all caps. Everyone gets mentioned except Elizabethtown.

But when did it all happen? In the 2010 Broadcasting and cable book Hershey has no stations. It notes on WMHX which it attributes to Elizabethtown. Harrisburg has a mere 10 none of which are on 106.7. You have to flip to the E-section to see the three entries for 106.7 WMHX, 1600 WPDC-AM, and 88.3 WWEC the college station at Elizabethtown College. WPDC was an ESPN affiliate back then, but is broadcasting Oldies today. WWEC is largely unchanged. Lets go through the story of 106.7 because so much has changed. 

WMSH signed on in 1964, then the sister station of WHRY 1600. Broadcasting & cable both stations as owned by Hershey Broadcasting but does note the programming was separate as early as 1965. FM 106.7 became WEPN in 1969, and then WPDC in 1971 matching the AM stick. The 1971 issue confirms this, but they were still not simulcasting. The FM stick was MOR and the AM stick was Country & Western. This foreshadows the next change.

In 1980 the calls changed again to 106.7 WRKZ and the FM country station debuted. The station was now owned by Eastern Broadcasting Corp, who also owned the AM stick. there's no format recorded for WPDC but there's a note that it duplicates WRKZ 70%. So its' safe to say they are both country stations at this point in time. Both are still in Elizabethtown as they still are in the 2010 issue. Notes in other sources that report they changed their city of license in 1980. As the town didnt' really exist trade magazines and annuals were slow to update. Hershey appears only in parentheses until the 2013 of Broadcasting& Cable. 

The Z-107 brand and country format lasted until 2004 a long period of stability for this tumultuous station. It was briefly home to the WCAT call sign and then began stunting a loop of pop goes the weasel. Then in February it changed calls to WCPP and rebranded as "coolpop" and a mixed CHR format was debuted. Coolpop was a bit unusual for the time. It mixed CHR hits with the worst of 1970s and 1980s pop singles, what they were calling "cassette classics." Fybush asked for airchecks on  a message board, other comments savaged their top singles [SOURCE] 

One writer on a message board called it "Constant poopfest 106.7." Don't Google that, the internet is not a safe space. But I would like to state for the record, that the comment was probably me. This is where Fybush and I differ, I am absolutely a music snob. He's a kinder gentler radio geek. Billboard ran an interesting article on the format that March quoting PD Will Robinson, who does a good job making demographics sound super creepy, like they're stalking their listeners.

"Actually, we know our target listener on a first-name basis... Her name is Jennifer, the most common female name [among women] born in 1971. She's 33 years old, we know what car she drives, how much money she makes, how many kids she has, where she shops. We've really targeted the station to her needs and wants. The music blend you hear is targeted toward the aspirations of Jennifer."

Then like many other novel formats Coolpop flamed out and converted to a more familiar Adult Hits format in 2005 as Mix 106.7. But that didn't do well and it rebranded as "Channel 106.7" in 2010 dropping the 70s singles. [SOURCE]

In 2011 Citadel merged with Cumulus and they flipped the station back to country music in 2012, returning to their golden period format with the brand "Z-Country 106.7". The WRKZ calls were long gone but they found a Z in the new calls WCZY.  The format stuck around but in 1024 Cumulus rebranded a swath of country stations as "Nash." It leaned a bit more country gold. 

The corporate ownership led to another series of format flips. In 2018 it went back to CHR, and swapped calls and format with 93.5 WWKL. At the time Cumulus also owned WIOV, and it reduced their overlap for that country music audience. But it was only this year that WWKL flipped from CHR to Rhythmic AC. They are still using the "Hot 106.76" brand, but I expect it to change again.