WJGS Survey-The First On ARSA

[CK-722]

Looks like an in house survey. Or maybe a few copies in record stores too. Anyone know more? Near mint copy.

[organman95]

98 1/2?

[Deleted User 14803]

WABX in Detroit was saying 99 1/2 for years until mid 80’s

[CK-722]

For the youngsters who don't remember, WJGS Houghton Lake (WUPS Harrison) and WHGR were founded by the Sparks family, and were coowned with WEXL and WOMC for many years, whose studios and transmitters were/are at 2201 Woodward Heights in Ferndale. It's current owner, Black Diamond Broadcasting, is largely coowned with The Lion's Den Restaurant in Waterford, and is based in Rochester Hills. The original WJGS transmitter location was on one of the WHGR 1290 towers in Prudenville, now gone and dismantled. It's huqe new 890 foot tower is just South of Houghton Lake.

[Deleted User 4520]

I remember WJGS well. Really liked them a lot back then. 98 and a half was excellent and I also wish they'd return to that. Nice playlist btw...

[CK-722]

I remember WJGS well. Really liked them a lot back then. 98 and a half was excellent and I also wish they'd return to that. Nice playlist btw...

I'll email Gary and ask where he found that. It's in such pristine shape, it looks like it was in a storage area to preserve documents like the Library of Congress or Smithsonian Museum or something.

[innate-in-you]

I remember WJGS well. Really liked them a lot back then. 98 and a half was excellent and I also wish they'd return to that. Nice playlist btw...

From the fall of '82 Top 40 in general was a nice playlist.

Sadly, it didn't last as long as the sensational sixties.

by the end of '86, rap had virtually swallowed Top 40 whole.

[CK-722]

WHGR 1290 Survey

http://las-solanas.com/arsa/surveys_item.php?sv=67196

[CK-722]

WHGR 1290 Survey

http://las-solanas.com/arsa/surveys_item.php?sv=67196

[themoose]

I remember WJGS well. Really liked them a lot back then. 98 and a half was excellent and I also wish they'd return to that. Nice playlist btw...

From the fall of '82 Top 40 in general was a nice playlist.

Sadly, it didn't last as long as the sensational sixties.

by the end of '86, rap had virtually swallowed Top 40 whole.

I was actually on the air at WJGS for a relatively short period during the WJGS "Top 40" format days. My partner and I hosted a morning show, with character voices, on-air games, and general goofiness. Although there was a fair amount of interest from the younger listeners, we never got a sense of how the community as a whole responded. I was glad to hear at least a few people enjoyed the music! It was a lot of fun for us, albeit a rather short-lived experiment.

[MWmetalhead]

I loved the Kiss FM jingle package WUPS used in the early / mid 90s ("98 and a half FM! U...P...S! We Deliver The Hits!").

The Mark Driscoll voice overs sounded pretty good, too.

I was very bummed when the station flipped to all 70s. YUCK. That fad was sweeping the nation at the time. 97.1 in Detroit flipped to the format and saw very limited success with it. 107.9 in Chicago featured the format, too. Grand Rapids never received such a station, likely due to the fact WODJ already was devoting a lot of spins to 70s music by the mid 90s.

I very vaguely remember WUPS being simulcast on 98.1 Glen Arbor for a brief time; I am unsure when that began or when & why that simulcast ended.

[ChrisWL1980]

WUPS sounded pretty good as a Hot AC in the very late '90s following the all '70s format, when they were "the big mix of the '80s and '90s." I remember discovering that on an up north trip in the spring of '98. Musically they were fresher and more exciting than Detroit's Q95-5. Not sure when it was that they began identifying as a Mount Pleasant area station, but it may have been around that time or slightly earlier.
Of course, that was the era when they could never seem to stick with a particular format direction for more than a year or so. Next thing I knew they dropped virtually all of the teen pop (Britney, Spice Girls, the boy bands etc.) and went into an interesting '80s pop/current & recurrent rock AC hybrid. Think Filter "Take a Picture" into Madonna "La Isla Bonita."
I also remember hearing a replay of an American Top 40 show from 1985 where WJGS "98 1/2 FM" got an on-air shoutout from Casey Kasem as an affiliate station.

[MWmetalhead]

The Northern Michigan's Big Mix era was definitely underrated, in my opinion.

[organman95]

I very vaguely remember WUPS being simulcast on 98.1 Glen Arbor for a brief time; I am unsure when that began or when & why that simulcast ended.

Not sure when the simulcast started, but it ended sometime after Del Reynolds bought the 98.1, and simulcasted with 105.1 Cheboygan