WNNK-FM

WNNK-FM (104.1 FM) is a commercial radio station licensed to serve Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The station is owned by Cumulus Media through licensee Cumulus Licensing LLC and broadcasts a hot adult contemporary format. Its studio is located at 2300 Vartan Way, Suite 130, Harrisburg and its transmitter and broadcast tower are located on Blue Mountain in East Pennsboro Township, Cumberland County.
History.
The station signed on for the first time in 1962 as WTPA-FM under ownership of Newhouse Broadcasting, owner of WTPA-TV, with a Beautiful Music format. In 1980, the station adopted the "FM104" branding with a format change to AOR. Newhouse sold WTPA to Foster Media in 1982, who then sold it to Keymarket Communications in 1984. In January 1985, the call sign was changed to WNNK, the station's branding changed to "Wink 104" and the format changed to Contemporary Hit Radio. Throughout the 80s and 90s, Wink 104 was consistently ranked #1 in the Arbitron ratings for the Harrisburg / Carlisle / Lebanon market.
Beginning in the late 1990s, Wink 104's ownership was changed several times due to mergers and acquisitions. Keymarket Communications sold WNNK to Capstar Broadcasting Corporation in 1995. In 1998, Capstar and Chancellor Media Corporation announced a merger that would result in Chancellor Media owning 463 stations in 105 markets when the deal was completed in second quarter 1999. Chancellor Media later became AMFM, Inc.
AMFM, Inc. was purchased by Clear Channel Communications (now iHeartMedia) in a deal announced on October 3, 1999, and valued at $17.4 billion. The merger brought WNNK and WTPA under the same ownership. An interesting footnote to this series of acquisitions is that a substantial percentage of WTPA's on-air imaging and DJ banter consisted of attacks on Wink 104 and its personalities in the years leading up to the Clear Channel purchase. Once both stations wound up under Clear Channel control, the new owners required WTPA DJs to immediately cease all on-air references to Wink 104.
As a condition of the Clear Channel-AMFM merger, the United States Department of Justice forced the new company to sell 99 radio stations in 27 markets in United States, including four stations in Harrisburg: WTPA, WTCY and WNCE-FM as well as WNNK. All the stations were promptly sold to Cumulus Media.
In 2001, shortly after the ownership changes, Clear Channel launched WHKF in an attempt to reduce Wink 104's market dominance by stealing the younger portion of WNNK's audience. This ultimately led to Clear Channel's adult-oriented station WRVV taking the overall #1 position in the market; not because of improved ratings at WRVV, but because of decreased listenership at WNNK. Cumulus Media reacted to WHKF by launching their own youth-oriented station, Hot 92, the former WCTX and WNCE. Although WHKF never approached Wink 104 in Arbitron ratings, it did cause Wink 104 to change formats from Hot AC to AC in March 2002. The logic to this maneuvering was that Wink 104 would continue to dominate the adult demographic, while Hot 92 would either dominate the young demographic or severely cripple WHKF's ratings.
From inception until 2003, Wink 104's studios and offices were located in a standalone building in uptown Harrisburg. Due to the consolidation with WTPA, WTCY, and WWKL, as well as the expenses involved with ongoing repairs, the studios and offices for all of the Cumulus Media stations were moved to a single location in an office park in Susquehanna Township (a suburb of Harrisburg).
Wink 104 is generally regarded as the original "Wink" station in contemporary radio, and has inspired other stations including the relatively close Wink 108 in State College, Pennsylvania and Wink 106 in Corning, New York.
Slogans used by Wink 104 include (in no particular order) "four in a row with no talk", "five / six in a row", "long music marathon", "we only stop the music twice an hour", "your new 10 in a row station", "the best songs of the 80s, 90s, and today", and "#1 for today's new hit music, free money, and fun". Their current slogan is "today's best music".
Production & imaging.
Wink 104 currently uses the "Z+" jingle package from JAM. From 2001 until mid-2002, Wink used a combination of the "KDWB 1996", "KDWB 1997", and "Fly 92" packages from Reel World Productions. Previously, the "Z World" package from JAM was used.
Until 2001, Wink 104 still used studio-grade CD players for music, and a combination of carts and AudioVault for commercials, jingles, and other non-programming elements. In 2001, Wink 104 began using Prophet, a computer-based automation system, almost exclusively.
For production, WNNK uses Audio Architecture and Imagio from TM Studios. They previously used BigFish Worldwide until June 1, 2015 when TM merged BigFish in to Imagio and Audio Architecture.
Bruce Bond.
Bruce Bond was the host of Wink 104's afternoon drive, titled "The Bruce Bond Late Afternoon Show". This show was noteworthy for both its format and the time slot in which it aired. The "Late Afternoon Show" was an all-talk show with multiple concurrent hosts; while this itself is not unusual, its presence on an otherwise all-music formatted station is highly unorthodox. Even more unusual was the fact that the show aired on weekdays from 3:00 PM to 7:00 PM, otherwise known as the "afternoon drive" and the second most-expensive portion of the day (generally second only to the morning drive) for advertisers. Typically, this time slot is reserved for carefully calculated and heavily tested programming. Wink 104 saw tremendous success with the format, however, and aside from a few brief interruptions, ran the show live from 1995 until 2002.
In 2002, Bruce Bond departed the station after the station's programming direction was changed to accommodate a broader 12-54 demographic. He was later convicted of forgery and identity theft six years after departing WNNK.
HD Radio.
Cumulus Broadcasting (now Cumulus Media) began adding HD Radio equipment to some of its stations in 2005. One of the first ten stations to receive the new technology was WNNK-FM.
On August 20, 2008, Cumulus Media moved the Urban AC programming on sister station WHGB, branded as "The Touch", to the HD2 subchannel of WNNK-FM, while WHGB switched to a sports radio format as an affiliate of the ESPN Radio network. The WHGB simulcast on 95.3, W237DE, which brought "The Touch" programming to FM, was switched to simulcasting WNNK-HD2 that day, keeping "The Touch" programming on 95.3 FM.
On August 27, 2011 "The Touch 95.3" posted on its website that its last day would be August 31, 2011, ending its programming on both 95.3 and WNNK-HD2. On August 31, Cumulus Media announced that W237DE would begin simulcasting WHGB 1400 AM the next day, on September 1, bringing ESPN Radio programming to 95.3.
Signal note.
WNNK-FM is short-spaced to WAEB-FM "B104" (licensed to serve Allentown, Pennsylvania) as they both operate on 104.1 MHz and the cities they are licensed to serve are only 77 miles apart. The minimum distance between two co-channel Class B FM radio stations according to current FCC rules is 150 miles.