WRVC and WCMI do a switcheroo in Huntington/Ashland

Several people have emailed me regarding WRVC in Huntington, WV, and their flip to sports talk.

Well, there's good news and there's bad news in this. First, the bad news is obviously WRVC, a station that previously dropped all of their progressive talk programming except for Al Franken and Ed Schultz a few months ago. As of today, they are a fulltime ESPN Radio-affiliated sports talk station.

But there's also some good news. Co-owned WCMI (1340AM), in nearby Ashland, KY, cedes its sports programming to WRVC and picks up a full-time progressive talk roster, consisting mostly of Air America Radio programming and Ed Schultz live.

The only semi-bad news in this is that WCMI's 700 1000 watt signal may be a bit weak in Huntington, though its city grade signal does cover the city's outskirts. Plans are in the works to upgrade to 1000 watts in the future. WRVC is currently the most powerful signal in the area, blasting 5000 watts during the day, though a bit hampered with a highly directional 1000 watts at night.

WCMI's schedule is mostly Air America, though they will air Thom Hartmann's midday show in place of Al Franken's, and also pick up Schultz live. Randi Rhodes' show will be delayed to the 6-9PM slot. The skipping over of Franken lends more credence to rumors that he will leave radio in the near future, a rumor I still have not been able to confirm or debunk.

UPDATE 1/11/07: Thanks to KCMI chief engineer Cameron Smith for an email update on the station's signal:

I saw on your blog that you had WCMI listed as 700 watts.

WCMI is licensed by the FCC for 1000 watts - non-directional fulltime.

http://www.fcc.gov/fcc-bin/amq?list=0&facid=21588

The license was granted 7/5/2005 and the facilities are at the full licensed power of 1kW.

(Now you have a nearly-30% power-increase just by doing a little fact-checking).

Thank you for your time,

Cameron Smith
Director of Engineering
Kindred Communications
WDGG-FM, WRVC-AM/FM/FM-1, WCMI
Marshall University / ISP Radio Network

Thanks for the update, Cameron. Obviously, I put too much faith in sites other than the FCC's (which can sometimes lag in updating). And it looks like the other guys have their information straight as well. Sorry about that, especially considering how seriously engineers take their masterwork.