WOZN-FM

WOZN-FM
City Mount Horeb, Wisconsin
Broadcast area Madison, Wisconsin
Branding 106.7FM/1670AM The Zone
Slogan "Madison's Sports Talk Station"
Frequency 106.7 MHz
First air date October 2005 (as WYZM)
Format Sports talk
(simulcast of WOZN)
ERP 2,900 watts
HAAT 146 meters
Class A
Facility ID 89056
Callsign meaning From the ZONe branding
Former callsigns WYZM (10/2005-12/2005)
WSLK (12/2005-1/2007)
WJQM (1/2007-11/2008)
WWQN (11/2008-12/2011)
WTDY-FM (12/2011-12/2012)
Affiliations CBS Sports Radio
Owner Mid-West Family Broadcasting
Sister stations WHIT, WJJO, WJQM, WLMV, WMGN, WOZN, WWQM-FM
Webcast Listen Live
Website MadCitySportsZone.com

WOZN-FM (106.7 FM) is a radio station licensed to Mount Horeb, Wisconsin and serving the Madison market. The station is owned by Mid-West Family Broadcasting and simulcasts the sports talk format of sister station WOZN (1670 AM). WOZN-FM broadcasts from a tower near Barneveld, Wisconsin, about 25 miles west of Madison.

History

WOZN-FM's history dates back to October 2005, when Mid-West Family Broadcasting began testing the 106.7 FM signal under the call sign WYZM, airing smooth jazz music normally heard on sister station WMGN during its "Magic Sunday Morning" program. The smooth jazz was there only temporarily, for on December 1, 2005, WYZM changed to WSLK and began simulcasting the classic hits format of sister station WHLK ("The Lake at 93-1 and 106-7").

At 4PM on January 26, 2007, WSLK broke away from the "Lake" simulcast and began a rhythmic contemporary format, identifying themselves as WJQM, or "106.7 Jamz." This move was in direct response to WKPO dropping the Rhythmic format two weeks earlier. "Jamz" remained on 106.7 until October 28, 2008, when they would move to 93.1 FM, displacing "The Lake" and moving "Jamz" to a signal that better serves the urban areas of Madison (whereas the 106.7 signal covers the more rural area of Iowa County and western Dane County).[1] After one more week of simulcasting "93-1 Jamz," 106.7 would adopt the WWQN call sign and become a simulcast of country sister station WWQM-FM, allowing "Q106" to cover the aforementioned rural Western areas that WWQM's Class A signal on 106.3 could not quite cover entirely.

WWQN would retain the "Q106" simulcast until December 13, 2011, when, 12 days after adopting the WTDY-FM call sign, it began simulcast of its news/talk sister station WTDY. The move would give the low-rated WTDY a presence on the clearer FM radio band, albeit on a signal that only covered Madison's fringes. The full WTDY schedule was simulcast on WTDY-FM, including local shows Sly in the Morning and Forward with Kurt Baron; full-hour local newscasts at 12PM and 5PM; national shows including Michael Smerconish and America's Radio News; and weekend broadcasts of NFL and college sports from Compass Media Networks and Sports USA.

News/talk programming continued on WTDY-FM until November 21, 2012, when morning host John "Sly" Sylvester and the station's entire news staff received layoff notices and automated Christmas music began playing.[2][3][4] The Christmas stunting lasted until the weekend of December 29, 2012, replaced by a two-song loop of "Wherever I May Roam" by Metallica and "Welcome to the Jungle" by Guns N' Roses.[5] The loop ended at 11AM on January 2, 2013, when both 1670 AM and 106.7 FM (identifying as WOZN and WOZN-FM) unveiled a sports talk format branded as "The Zone," launching with the CBS Sports Radio debut of The Jim Rome Show ("Welcome to the Jungle" is its opening theme).[6] (The WTDY-FM call letters were reassigned to a station in Philadelphia in 2017.)

"The Zone's" schedule relies mainly on programming from CBS Sports Radio, including The Jim Rome Show. Local and state content on the station includes the call-in show "Snuff and the Benchwarmers" (6-8AM); "The Bill Michaels Show" (11AM-2PM), which originates from Milwaukee's WSSP;[7] and "Wisconsin Farm Report with Pam Jahnke" (5-6AM), a statewide farm markets program that is the only holdover from WTDY's news/talk schedule. "The Zone" also carries live game broadcasts of the United States Hockey League's Madison Capitols as well as the Northwoods League's Madison Mallards.[8]


See also

References

  1. ↑ "Madison's classic rock station 'The Lake' changes to hip-hop format", from Wisconsin State Journal, October 28, 2008.
  2. ↑ Staff report (21 November 2012). "Sly, WTDY news staff react to their layoffs by Midwest Family Broadcasting". Isthmus. Retrieved 22 November 2012.
  3. ↑ "Radio personality Sly, others out of work at WTDY," from Wisconsin State Journal, 11/22/2012
  4. ↑ "WTDY Madison Dismisses Staff; Flips to Christmas," from Radio Insight, originally posted 11/21/2012 and updated 11/30/2012
  5. ↑ Source: Twitter.com/RadioInsight (12/29/2012 message)
  6. ↑ "Format Changes". Your Midwest Media. 2 January 2013.
  7. ↑ "WSSP/Milwaukee's Bill Michaels Adds WOZN To Statewide Network As Show Turns 2," from All Access, 7/29/2013
  8. ↑ "Mallards Partner with The Zone," from NorthwoodsLeague.com, 5/31/2016

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