The station was sold after I left. It has different call letters and a much different music format now. In recent years one or two other radio stations in the area had used the WQWQ call sign, but they were not affiliated with the original company that employed me. Most recently, the WQWQ call sign has been used by a television station in Paducah, Kentucky.

WQWQ.wav 16 seconds 361,196 bytes

WQWQ was a 50,000 watt FM station serving Muskegon, Grand Rapids, and most of West Michigan. The population of the service area was over a million people, or about 350 thousand households.

The music format was Easy Listening, or "Beautiful Music" as it was referred to on air. (Don't you dare call it "elevator music!") Interestingly enough, though, when the station was being built and the Chief Engineer was ready to make the first test of the transmitter, none of the music had yet arrived so he had to resort to the only record at hand. Thus the first music ever heard on the station was actually a rocking Beach Boys album. Needless to say, the owners quickly made sure some easy listening records were delivered to the station.

The initial "W" in the call letters was because the Federal Communications Commission assigns call signs starting with "W" to broadcast stations in the eastern part of the United States. The "Q" was to stand for "Quality." The letters "WQ" were repeated to form the required four-letters of the call sign to represent the fact that the station's programming was in Stereo. Although stereo FM is taken for granted today, at the time the only other local competition broadcasting Easy Listening was a non-stereo AM station. Thus, WQWQ promoted the fact that its music sounded better because it was FM stereo instead of AM mono.

The music programming was supplemented by a number of special features including local news, University of Michigan football, and reports on fishing, boating, and water recreation live from the WQWQ Lake Patrol as it cruised Lake Michigan and the inland waterways.