WEOK
Encyclopedia : W : WE : WEO : WEOK
WEOK is an radio station licensed to Poughkeepsie, New York and serving the Mid-Hudson Valley. The station is owned by Cumulus Media broadcasts on 1390 kHz at 5 kilowatts daytime and 106 watts nighttime from a three-tower directional antenna array adjacent to the Cumulus cluster complex on Pendell Road in the Town of Poughkeepsie.
WEOK, and simulcast partner 1340 WALL in Middletown, New York, are two of the few Radio Disney affiliates not owned by Disney itself and have had this format since March 2005. The two stations have been simulcasting programming since September 1999 going through three prior formats.
History to 1999
WEOK signed on in 1949 as a daytimer and the second station licensed to Poughkeepsie after WKIP. Until the early 1960s, the station ran a full service middle of the road format and in 1962 added an FM signal at 101.5 MHz (now WPDH). The station began to lean toward soft rock by the mid 1960's and was more on an adult contemp[orary station by 1970.In 1972, the Dyson family bought the WEOK stations and changes took place at both frequencies. While the FM side went on its own, the AM side began to lean towards Top 40 in an attempt which today would be considered to be Hot Adult Contemporary. Weekends included specialty programming including the start of the "Solid Gold Jukebox" hosted by WKIP refugee Rick McCaffrey (now of WBPM). This format lasted until 1981 when WEOK flipped to country in the wave of the "Urban Cowboy" fad but failed in the ratings and quickly left that format in 1983. Though WEOK returned to what it had left, it leaned more on oldies to the point of totally flipping to oldies in 1986. Two years later, this format was replaced when WEOK flipped to pop standards as a charter affiliate of Unistar's "AM Only" format, better known today as Westwood One's "Popular Standards" while retaining local programming drivetimes and parts of weekends. WEOK's oldies format and some of the airstaff (including Rick McCaffery)informally migrated to WCZX and in 1993 WCZX became a sister to WEOK through a local marketing agreement then an outright purchase in 1996.
History since 1999
The aging demographics of pop standards by the late 1990s led WEOK owner Crystal Radio Group (the spun-off Dyson family unit) to explore changing its format. In the summer of 1999, the decision was made to dissolve the formats of WEOK and sister WALL in Middletown and to launch a new format on the two frequencies. On September 6 1999, WEOK dumped pop standards and joined with WALL to simulcast the ir talk format.The stations became known as "News-Talk 13", an amalgam of Rush Limbaugh, Dr. Laura, Poughkeepsie-centric local host Larry Hughes, ESPN Radio, and assorted other programming. Complaints that programming leaned too much towards one area or another, plus the high numbers of WABC from New York City, doomed this format.
In August of 2000 just before the sale of this station along with the rest of the Dyson/Crystal stations to Aurora the talk format was dropped in favor of ESPN Radio full time. The stations became known as "1340/1390 ESPN Radio", which expanded the relatively successful night/weekend ESPN programming to full-time with assorted sports rights (New York Yankees, New York Giants, Marist College basketball). Was a minor success although a New York City affiliate came along in WEPN. But the Aurora stations including WEOK were all sold to Cumulus in the Spring of 2002. At that point Dyson/Aurora upper management exited and Cumulus brought their own people into the station while lower lever staff members including the airstaff were not affected significantly. Cumulus determined ESPN Radio was not meeting the stations' needs. Initially they considered switching to radio Disney but after some research a decision was made to switch to a Spanish language format since it seemed that the Spanish population was growing in the Hudson Valley.
So in September 2002 WEOK/WALL became "El Ritmo", a Spanish Contemporary format. It would be the first and also only Spanish-language station in he Hudson Valley. Some felt the format would have done better on FM. Others say that the idea a bit ahead of its time which proved to be a hard sell to new owners Cumulus Media. The format would be live in morning and afternoon drive times and a few hours in the early afternoon on weekends but automated the rest of the time. As ratings continued to be very low it was determined that the format could not continue since it was an impossible sell. So in March of 2005 WEOK/WALL flipped to Radio Disney, which ironically is what WEOK and WALL considered flipping to when leaving ESPN Radio.
External link
| Radio stations in the Mid-Hudson Valley market (Columbia, Dutchess, Greene, Orange, and Ulster Counties in New York) |
| AM Stations
660 |
770 |
810 |
880 |
920 |
950 |
1010 |
1020 |
1050 |
1080 |
1110 |
1130 |
1170 |
1220 |
1260 1340 | 1370 | 1390 | 1420 | 1450 | 1490 Kingston | 1490 Port Jervis | 1510 | 1560 |
|
| FM Stations
87.7 |
88.3 |
88.7 WRHV |
88.7 WFNP |
89.7 |
90.9 |
91.3 |
91.7 |
92.1 |
92.7 |
92.9 |
93.3 |
93.5 |
94.3 |
95.1 |
96.1 |
96.7 |
96.9 |
97.3 |
97.7 |
97.9 98.1 | 98.5 | 99.3 | 100.1 | 100.7 | 101.5 | 103.1 | 103.3 | 104.7 | 105.5 | 107.3 | |