Hello Scott,
Love your site on the history of WLS, so informative and really very interesting, love the photographs and memorabilia.
In 1984 I commissioned and operated a radio station in Galway in the west of Ireland with a project working name of the West Local Station. The station was the first to introduce an FM stereo music based service in the west with a high powered FM transmitter, and the first 24 hour stereo station.
Just before official launch date of the station and while we were arranging to take on Casey Kasem’s AT40 from Watermark, my contact suggested that our name was a bit of a mouthful for Casey, why not abbreviate the name to WLS and go forward that way, but make sure ABC was cool with that. I was given a contact number and the ABC person I dealt with were happy for us to use the name, not only that, they sent various ID jingles to us later that month which we used.
When American Top Forty launched on our station, Casey Kasem only had to announce the new Irish member of the AT 40 family as ‘WLS Music Radio Galway Ireland’, a great day for us.
We created a logo and image for the station, and after test transmissions had proved effective we switched into our new music radio programming in February 1985. From the beginning, WLS Music Radio in Galway was the market leader and dominant throughout its region, even the national outlet, RTE, was way behind in surveys. Our success was driven as much by our image as our air sound, our FM signal being heavily processed to give us a ‘solid’ impact when a listener tuned past our spot at 102.7 FM, and on our 846 am outlet we used an Orban Optimod to firm the output.
As WLS in Chicago went talk in 1989, so too did WLS in Galway change, becoming, in 1988, Coast 103 after a change of ownership which proved to be fatal and the whole station ceased in 1989.
If you would like some images and items of this funky little ‘homage’ station to the great WLS Chicago I would be more than happy to send you these.
Once again, the site is great Scott and I’ll get Hans Knot to mention it in Radio Report from The Netherlands. Please find a photo of the WLS HQ in Galway plus a studio shot.
Peace and Long Life,
-Don Stevens
