Rockin' In the Hall of Fame City: Part 2

To paraphrase an old Conway Twitty song, "Hello friends. Nice to see you. It's been a long time." This blog has been sadly neglected by yours truly due to a combination of real world responsibilities, laziness and a lack of new content. My apologies.

With that mea culpa out of the way, it's time to step into the WayBack Machine and revisit Canton, the onetime home of WQIO/1060, best known as "Q-10". When the station switched to a Top 40 format in late 1976, it came during a period of transition for the radio industry; The rise of music formats on FM was gradually siphoning off listeners from their AM counterparts. However, WQIO managed to rise above its longtime status as an also-ran in the market and limitations as a daytimer to mount a significant challenge its contemporaries in the ratings. In fact, Q-10 gained enough of a foothold in Canton that it arguably helped bring an end to Top 40 on its more-established rival WINW/1520. This success can be attributed to program director Ron Foster, who launched the new format after arriving from Youngstown's WFMJ/1390. In spite of the ratings turnaround, WQIO couldn't escape the problem of losing listeners to FM. By 1981, the writing was on the wall, and the station briefly switched to country before a sale brought a new owner and another programming philosophy.

In this brief aircheck from January 20, 1979, Steve Kelly presents the hits on a Saturday afternoon. Kelly later became a well-known personality on the now-former WJER/101.7 and 1450 in New Philadelphia and, for a time, WSNY/94.7 "Sunny 95" in Columbus. He currently is the program director and morning host on New Philly's WTUZ/99.9.

NEO Airchecks would like to thank longtime reader Bob Papa for providing this aircheck. Keep the contributions coming, folks!