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Name: WYPV
Age: 2
Occupation: right-winged hate talk station
Last Seen: Petoskey, MI
Bee-otched For: polluting northern Michigan's airwaves--
In northern Michigan, a view of the bay is half the pay.
Also, a listen to the radio is half of what it's supposedly worth.
Last week, I went to the UP to check out an old deer cabin that's been in the family since the 1920's. However, I was in the back seat the whole time since I was going up with two aunts. And even worse, the internet sucks, so no Sirius Internet Radio.
Yep, I had to listen to my Walkman.
With no real antenna, the radio SUCKED. SUCKED, SUCKED, SUCK, SUCK, SUCKED. I was lucky to pick up a handful of stations at a time, and even worse, one of those stations was the new-and-improved WYPV, which moved from 106.3 to two frequencies: 94.5 Mackinaw City and 93.9 Mio/Gaylord/Grayling.
For those who don't know, WYPV's call sign stands for "We're Your Patriot Voice". Yep! It's a radio station for the Tea Party and militia nuts that live up north. The station does have a few local hosts, including co-hosts "Trucker Randy" and Brian Sommerfield, who is one of the station's owners. Plus, Greg Marshall, whose show's already heard on WMKT 1270 Charlevoix. National hosts on WYPV include Mark Levin, Red Eye Radio and Alex Jones, who received a lot of flack for being an influence on the Boston bombers.
Sadly, WYPV's signal delivers a punch throughout the Straits area, and even worse, it was a helluva lot better years ago. Ten years ago, 94.5 and 93.9, along with 95.5 Traverse City was The Zone, a modern rock station. 93.9 dropped out of the simulcast, however, and became a simulcast of 102.9 Big Country. In 2007, 94.5 dropped The Zone and became Star 94.5, playing Hot AC. Then, it became classic country and then a simulcast of classic rocker The Bear along with 93.9.
WYPV originally was on 106.3 out of Onaway, but there was a problem: Del Reynolds wanted to re-purchase the stations that made up The Bear, The Zone and Big Country, Northern Star Broadcasting. Because of FCC regulations, he had to sell off a few stations. So, he dealed with WYPV: they would get 94.5 and 93.9 if Del got 106.3. The trade-off was a success - minus some red tape issues - and what happened in the end was this:
*94.5 and 93.9 became Patriot Voice,
*The Bear moved to 97.7 and is still on 98.1 Traverse City and 107.1 Cadillac,
*the station that once occupied 97.7, Easy 97.7 moved to 106.3.
Also, the Easy format gained 95.5 Traverse City, which yanked off the Real Rock format and gave it a sole home at 105.1. The station came in OK throughout most of the northern part of the trip, but that's it.
Sadly, because of the environment that radio is in, people are being robbed of having something good to listen to. Even in northern Michigan, the wireless internet is a joke (I never got anything over 2G speeds), so streaming was out of the picture except if I wanted to have it sit and buffer for a long, long time.
Even more, why does northern Michigan NEED to have another station aimed towards right-winged wackjobs? There's WTCM, WMKT, WJML and now 94.5/93.9. I did listen to them for a bit, and a lot of their local commercials seemed to be from companies selling vitamins and tax relief companies, plus a Mexican restaurant in Petoskey (weird, huh?).
I checked the Alexa rank for WYPV and it's nonexistent. This website gets more views than they do. I hope that this station doesn't get the ad dollars to keep it on the air and it will shut down soon. What a waste of air space. Bear in mind that the Straits area's lost a lot of population in the past decade thanks to the bad economy and the ideas of their hosts aren't helping. Hell, I have a cousin who had a business in Charlevoix and lost it because of the unprofitable seasonal nature of the north.
And if WYPV goes under, I doubt anybody will be seeing a Sotheby's sign next to the building. (and yes, Sotheby's is in northern Michigan)
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Got a Bee-otch to nominate? E-mail us @ chuck69dotcom@gmail.com. All suggestions (except for me) are welcome!
Bee-otch of the Day Archives can be seen on http://beeotchoftheday.blogspot.com!
Bee-otch of the Day is a production of Chuck69.com, Grand Rapids' site for Stern, politics and more!
Age: 2
Occupation: right-winged hate talk station
Last Seen: Petoskey, MI
Bee-otched For: polluting northern Michigan's airwaves--
In northern Michigan, a view of the bay is half the pay.
Also, a listen to the radio is half of what it's supposedly worth.
Last week, I went to the UP to check out an old deer cabin that's been in the family since the 1920's. However, I was in the back seat the whole time since I was going up with two aunts. And even worse, the internet sucks, so no Sirius Internet Radio.
Yep, I had to listen to my Walkman.
With no real antenna, the radio SUCKED. SUCKED, SUCKED, SUCK, SUCK, SUCKED. I was lucky to pick up a handful of stations at a time, and even worse, one of those stations was the new-and-improved WYPV, which moved from 106.3 to two frequencies: 94.5 Mackinaw City and 93.9 Mio/Gaylord/Grayling.
For those who don't know, WYPV's call sign stands for "We're Your Patriot Voice". Yep! It's a radio station for the Tea Party and militia nuts that live up north. The station does have a few local hosts, including co-hosts "Trucker Randy" and Brian Sommerfield, who is one of the station's owners. Plus, Greg Marshall, whose show's already heard on WMKT 1270 Charlevoix. National hosts on WYPV include Mark Levin, Red Eye Radio and Alex Jones, who received a lot of flack for being an influence on the Boston bombers.
Sadly, WYPV's signal delivers a punch throughout the Straits area, and even worse, it was a helluva lot better years ago. Ten years ago, 94.5 and 93.9, along with 95.5 Traverse City was The Zone, a modern rock station. 93.9 dropped out of the simulcast, however, and became a simulcast of 102.9 Big Country. In 2007, 94.5 dropped The Zone and became Star 94.5, playing Hot AC. Then, it became classic country and then a simulcast of classic rocker The Bear along with 93.9.
WYPV originally was on 106.3 out of Onaway, but there was a problem: Del Reynolds wanted to re-purchase the stations that made up The Bear, The Zone and Big Country, Northern Star Broadcasting. Because of FCC regulations, he had to sell off a few stations. So, he dealed with WYPV: they would get 94.5 and 93.9 if Del got 106.3. The trade-off was a success - minus some red tape issues - and what happened in the end was this:
*94.5 and 93.9 became Patriot Voice,
*The Bear moved to 97.7 and is still on 98.1 Traverse City and 107.1 Cadillac,
*the station that once occupied 97.7, Easy 97.7 moved to 106.3.
Also, the Easy format gained 95.5 Traverse City, which yanked off the Real Rock format and gave it a sole home at 105.1. The station came in OK throughout most of the northern part of the trip, but that's it.
Sadly, because of the environment that radio is in, people are being robbed of having something good to listen to. Even in northern Michigan, the wireless internet is a joke (I never got anything over 2G speeds), so streaming was out of the picture except if I wanted to have it sit and buffer for a long, long time.
Even more, why does northern Michigan NEED to have another station aimed towards right-winged wackjobs? There's WTCM, WMKT, WJML and now 94.5/93.9. I did listen to them for a bit, and a lot of their local commercials seemed to be from companies selling vitamins and tax relief companies, plus a Mexican restaurant in Petoskey (weird, huh?).
I checked the Alexa rank for WYPV and it's nonexistent. This website gets more views than they do. I hope that this station doesn't get the ad dollars to keep it on the air and it will shut down soon. What a waste of air space. Bear in mind that the Straits area's lost a lot of population in the past decade thanks to the bad economy and the ideas of their hosts aren't helping. Hell, I have a cousin who had a business in Charlevoix and lost it because of the unprofitable seasonal nature of the north.
And if WYPV goes under, I doubt anybody will be seeing a Sotheby's sign next to the building. (and yes, Sotheby's is in northern Michigan)
---
Got a Bee-otch to nominate? E-mail us @ chuck69dotcom@gmail.com. All suggestions (except for me) are welcome!
Bee-otch of the Day Archives can be seen on http://beeotchoftheday.blogspot.com!
Bee-otch of the Day is a production of Chuck69.com, Grand Rapids' site for Stern, politics and more!
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