FM Technical Profile: WTKE
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- Station Name:
- 100.3 K-Rock
- Frequency:
- 100.3
- Format:
- Classic Rock
- Transmitter
Location:
- [map]
[street view] On
James Lee Road, just south of Racetrack Road NW.
- Power (ERP):
- 6 kW
- Antenna:
- Omnidirectional
- Antenna HAAT:
- 252 feet
- Other
Information:
- 60 dBu protected
contour
map, from the FCC.
- HD-2:
Sports Talk
"The Ticket Sports Network"
- // WTKE Milton,
FL
// W232CF Fort Walton Beach, FL
// W246BN Pensacola, FL
HD-3: News/Talk
"News Talk Freedom 94.3"
// W232CF Fort Walton Beach, FL
- More Information:
- [FCC]
- [FCCdata]
- [Radio-Locator]
- [Wikipedia]
[Facebook]
- Owner:
- Omni Broadcasting
- History:
- Early History
This station dates back to May 1993 when it came on the air with
the WNCV (NiCeVille) calls, airing an Adult Contemporary format
targeting the area's more affluent listeners. It was put on the
air by a company called Century 100 Broadcasting. They sold the
station to Dothan-based "Radio People" Holladay Broadcasting in
1996.
Sales and Station Switches
By March of 2002 the station had been sold to Cumulus. In March
2006, Cumulus sold the station to Ron Hale's Star Broadcasting.
Star Broadcasting, in turn, sold off WNCV and an AM in Milton to
Cumulus. In August 2006, the Adult Contemporary format and WNCV
calls moved to Hale's "new" station at 93.3 MHz, where they reside
today. This station became Classic Rock "K-Rock 100.3" WRKN.
The format switch itself happened in the 6 pm hour of August
2nd, 2006. In 2007, this station was sold off to R. Lee Hagen's
Fort Walton Beach License Company.
The station flipped to in November 2009 to Sports Talk, taking that
format and the WTKE-FM calls from the station on 98.1 MHz. WTKE
had originally been an Andalusia-licensed facility that moved closer
and closer to the beaches in an attempt to make money. It wasn't
until 2009 that the station was finally able to move all the way into
the Fort Walton Beach market. When it did, it became WHWY and
the sports came to this facility. In the summer of 2010, AM 1490
in Milton (as WTKE) became simulcasting this station. It later began
simulcasting on a station licensed to Port St. Joe, east of Panama
City, WTKP.
- Translator Issues
Due to financial hardships, the AM WTKE in Milton was off the air
after just two years of relaying "The Ticket Sports Network"
programming; it really wasn't necessary to help the network serve
Pensacola. By 2010 the station was being heard on translator
W246BN in Pensacola, which serves the metro area a bit better than the
AM did. Of interest is that up until May 2016 this station was
listed as being a translator for Pensacola's talk station WPNN; it
never was. In May 2016 the parent changed to WDWR, the Catholic
religious AM whose tower the 97.1 translator was allegedly on.
It's unclear if the translator was ever really there, as it remained
on the air and operational when WDWR's tower was taken down a few
years prior! A further
bit of questionable legality has arisen as the translator has been
noted to be carrying different programming from either WDWR, WPNN or
WTKE-FM. Translators are not allowed to originate programming,
so the "true" source of this translator's programming was something of
a mystery.
In early February 2018, the FCC finally dismissed the application to
cover for the Pensacola-based translator facility, citing unpaid debt
or unacknowledged correspondence. The translator, however,
continued to operate from downtown Pensacola, despite the application
being denied. In late March 2018, the station filed for a silent
STA to take the translator off the air, citing "red light issues" but
the station never actually went off the air, continuing to
broadcasting (probably) illegally. A new license to cover was
been filed for the Pensacola translator as of 23 March 2018, now being
fed programming from Milton's WTKE AM again. In September 2019,
the FCC again dismissed a license to cover for the translator, citing
power level violations of 47 CFR § 74.1235.
In August 2019, the translator's parent station was changed back to
WTKE-FM.
Modern Times
Ownership of the station was to return to Ron Hale's Omni Broadcasting
in March 2022, for $425,000 paid to R. Lee Hagen. It's noted
that the deals from 2003 and 2006 were tied up in legal issues until
this point. They eventually snared not just the two parties
involved in this station, but also Cumulus, Qantum and even Clear
Channel (now iHeart Radio).
In May 2022, the station dropped its longtime Sports Talk format for
Classic Rock as "100.3 K-Rock". The sports continues on WTKE
(AM) in Milton and the translator in Pensacola, as well as on a
recently-launched HD2 subchannel of this station. That same month,
they applied to move the transmitter site to one owned by Omni,
located on James Lee Road just south of Racetrack Road. That
application was granted in late June 2022. Although it has
higher power than the previous facility, the coverage area will be
mostly the same due to a lower antenna height. The station filed
a license to cover for that change in early September 2022. That
same month the station filed to move translator W232CF from a site off
James Lee Road to the Hollywood Boulevard tower site currently used by
several other stations. The power will increase from 98 watts to
250 watts. At some point the station added an HD3 with the News/Talk
format for "94.3 News Talk Freedom" WFDM. The HD3 became the primary
feed for that translator in April 2023 when the AM signed off
permanently.
The station WTKP licensed to Port St. Joe was dropped from the
simulcast after the license was deleted by the FCC for failing to
operate from a licensed site, failing to file a license to cover on a
construction permit and other technical deficiencies.