City Watseka, Illinois Frequency 95.9 MHz | Branding Classic Hits 95.9 WIQI Format Classic hits | |
Broadcast area Iroquois County and Kankakee First air date February 2008 (2008-02) (part-time, as WMLF)
June 23, 2015 (2015-06-23) (full-time) | ||
WIQI (95.9 FM) is a radio station in Watseka, Illinois that is owned by Radioactive, LLC and is operated under a local marketing agreement. The station currently carries a classic hits format covering Watseka along with Iroquois County and Kankakee with an output of 6000 watts ERP.
History
From 2011 until March 2015, its main use as a facility was to hold call signs for the moribund media company, Merlin Media (with which Radioactive formerly shared ownership with radio executive Randy Michaels), where it was used to hold the WKQX calls historically associated with the 101.1 FM frequency in Chicago to prevent a competitor in that market from acquiring them. During this period, the station itself broadcast for only days at a time in each late winter in order to prevent the license from being revoked by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for inactivity. The station's original 14 meter HAAT 1000 watt signal was limited to Watseka. On January 16, 2014, its call letters changed from WKQX to WIQI with the return of the WKQX calls to 101.1 in Chicago.
In March 2015, the station asked for a construction permit to widen the signal's coverage, mainly towards the Kankakee area; this was granted on April 15. On June 23, 2015, WIQI placed this facility on the air; at that time, it began to broadcast full-time with daytime airstaff. This came shortly before the FCC began to disallow the abuse of license holding to keep a station silent on July 2, 2015.