WCTM-AM
After the FM station was sold, Coning focused on acquiring an AM license (he had originally wanted to build an AM station, but the lack of available frequencies led him to build the FM station first). After a 12-year struggle to obtain a frequency, WCTM (1130 AM) went on the air in 1981 as a daytime-only station and picked up where the FM left off a decade earlier, playing beautiful music. The studios and transmitter were located east of Eaton in an open field behind an abandoned drive-in theater (since razed) in the rural Preble County community of Glenwood (near West Alexandria, which was the station's mailing address).
Coning ran the operation by himself, using a home-built reel-to-reel automation system (a little box called a "Tel-Timer" gave the time and temperature in a computerized voice), while freelance voice-over announcers Darrel Studebaker,John Bauman(engineer) and Jim Linthicum voiced commercials,liners and announcements. While the station's call letters were often said on the air to mean "We Cherish This Music," in reality "WCTM" stood for the initials of the four partners who had put the original FM station on the air.
In addition to its beautiful music format, WCTM aired farm and agricultural programming from Ed Johnson's Agri Broadcast Network (for western Ohio farmers) and Derry Brownfield's Brownfield Network (for eastern Indiana farmers), helping to earn the station its nickname, "Radio Ranch 1130." This nickname was probably inspired by Ohio country music artist Donnie Bowser and the Radio Ranch Boys, and by KWKH, a country music station in Shreveport, Louisiana which also broadcast at 1130 kHz and used the "Radio Ranch" nickname.
WCTM aired local sports for a time, along with NASCAR coverage on weekends and the syndicated "Waxworks" nostalgia/big band program hosted by Gary Hannes. WCTM was also the first Ohio radio station to affiliate with Ted Turner's CNN Radio in 1983. Later, the station aired USA Radio Network news and sports. In its final years, the "beautiful music" format was often peppered with Stan Coning's soft-spoken recollections of his early life in Eaton and people he had known.
Read more about this topic: WCTM (defunct)