As somebody who was always looking for “intriguing stations,” long before I began labeling them as such, it was always exciting to come across a small-market station with big-city moves. Sometimes they were discovered on road trips. Sometimes they were composites that Radio & Records CHR editor Joel Denver shared with me when I began my career at that trade publication in the mid-1980s.
Sometimes, great small-market CHRs were helmed by a veteran PD (often the morning host as well), who could have worked anywhere but chose to stay rooted. Often, they were the work of a larger-market MD or APD on a first programming job, such as Jim Ryan at WJXQ (Q106) Lansing, Mich. Often, they took that spirit of music enterprise with them to unlikely markets, which is why I remember John Clay playing “But Not Tonight” by Depeche Mode on KWES Midland, Texas.
The small-market stations I liked for their musical idiosyncrasies were different from the medium- and small-market stations that were loaded with mid-chart stiffs, although sometimes I enjoyed that, too, if I liked one of those songs. Living in Los Angeles or New York during most of the ’80s, the only way I got to hear “Jammin’ Me” by Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers or “Downtown” by One 2 Many on the radio, besides American Top 40, was on a road trip.
The same went for “oh wow” oldies, especially after the CHR comeback in 1982-83 led stations to excise anything more than 2-3 years old. Sometimes, if I came across an unusually old/deep library, it was clearly with intent, especially at those stations that chose to lean adult. Sometimes it was probably just not having pruned the library. Either way, I particularly enjoyed, say, the border market of El Centro, Calif./Mexicali, where it was still possible to hear Abba on CHR radio in the late ’80s.
In general, I was looking for gems, not goofiness. The late Clarke Ingram, radio’s biggest fan and most thorough airchecker, delighted in both. If there had been a real “WSQK (The Squawk) Hawkins, Ind.,” the fictious Stranger Things station brought to life by the UK’s Global Radio this week, Clarke would not just have taped it, but done a guest shift.
“The Squawk” is a galvanizing achievement among radio people worldwide, while for many U.S. readers, the best moment of 2025 is the revived WGTZ (Z93) Dayton channeling its medium-market ’80s/’90s CHR format. As is often the case when TV portrays radio, vintage or otherwise, there’s a lot of “stacks of wax” type DJ patter on The Squawk. For some industry people, that’s on-point because a small-market CHR would have been heavy on puking and clichés. Right?
Maybe, but those aren’t the stations I remembered from my travels. Often, the clichés were just as bad in medium and even large markets as the WHTZ (Z100) New York and KIIS Los Angeles clones proliferated in 1983-84. There may have been a lot of small-market stations that unintentionally amused. There was also a lot of small-market radio that, even when it was routine for its time, sounds pretty slick and vital now.
Today, CHR’s greatest proof-of-life often starts around market No. 75 with WAEB (B104) Allentown, Pa., and works its way down through WKRZ Wilkes-Barre, Pa.; WXLK (K92) Roanoke, Va.; KKMG Colorado Springs; WIXX Green Bay, Wis.; WVAQ Morgantown, W. Va.; WMGI Terre-Haute, Ind.; Bristol Broadcasting’s stations in Johnson City, Tenn., Paducah, Ky., and Charleston, W. Va.; WKEE Huntington, W. Va.; WHYA (Y101) Cape Cod, Mass., KNDE College Station, Texas; and plenty more. Stations like those are no longer differentiated primarily by having a deeper gold library, particularly in our throwback-CHR era when Fergie’s “Glamorous” plays more than 100x a week on reporting CHRs in every market size.
It’s hard to create a definitive list of great small-market CHRs of the ’80s, beginning with where you draw the line. Do you include Dayton? Roanoke? Allentown? WKCI (KC101) New Haven? WABB Mobile, Ala.? The Fresno battle between KMGX, KYNO, and later KMGX? Many Ross on Radio Facebook friends, asked for their favorites, did. My list starts outside the top 100, but Stranger Things is filmed in a town of 5,000 people, and any place that small in the ’80s was more likely to have a Country station, a full-service AC, or a Satellite Music Network affiliate in real life than a Top 40.
I also encountered a lot of stations that I liked but didn’t hear regularly. My radio rambles rarely took me to the same market twice. Stations sent Joel composites, but only until they got reporting status. There are also some great medium- and small-market stations, such as WCIL Carbondale, Ill.; KQKQ (Sweet 98) Omaha, Neb.; and KLYV Dubuque, Iowa, that I didn’t get to hear until the ’90s, but which plenty of other radio people vouch for. But here are a few that stood out for me.
- WZYQ (Z104) Frederick, Md. In the early ’80s, it would have been the hands-down winner of this discussion. The surprise is how the legend endures decades later. “I never heard them in person, but their composite aircheck was incredible,” says Joe Crain. In the early ’80s, it was not only the last bastion of high-energy ’70s-style Top 40, but also, for a few years, a keeper of the flame at a moment when nearby Washington, D.C., didn’t have a true Top 40 at all, thus prompting me to travel far enough north in the metro to hear it.
- WXXX (95-Triple-X) Burlington, Vt., “sounded like a million bucks,” says WGTZ PD Java Joel Murphy. “Great playlist, personalities, processing. As good as many large-market CHRs.” WXXX’s was easily the best composite Joel shared at R&R — musically aggressive and with an odd Lettermanesque sense of humor. (For reasons I still don’t understand, the jocks referred to the station as being located in the Asti Spumante Building.)
- WPST Trenton, N.J., is sort of a cheat, given its regional signal and still-felt musical influence in Philadelphia, but it was also my hometown station during junior high. Because PD Tom Taylor kept it friendly and conversational through the ’80s, even with the more bombastic Z100 and WCAU-FM Philadelphia on either side, it’s also the successful ’80s CHR that in no way sounds like WSQK’s imagining of that era.
- KCAQ (Q105) Oxnard, Calif., was one of those ’80s CHRs where playing “Fire” by the Ohio Players was definitely intentional, particularly since it was modeled on WINZ-FM (I95) Miami and KKBQ (93Q) Houston, which were successfully doing the same. (WTLQ Wilkes-Barre, Pa., was similarly influenced.) There were also a lot of the same novelties and early hip-hop crossovers that 93Q played. Q105 was also an early stop for programmer Brian Thomas.
- KHTY (Y97) Santa Barbara, Calif. Eventually, I got to work across the street from KCAQ at Urban KMYX (Mix 106), itself a station that outpunched its weight, but by that time Y97 was the quirky-for-its-time station that served as a launching pad for the late Steve Smith and was fast on both new-wave and dance crossovers.
You’re encouraged to check out the entire Facebook list. There are readers who named legendary stations from early in their career, such as WYSS Sault Ste. Marie, Mich.; WSQV Williamsport, Pa.; WNDU (U93) South Bend, Ind.; KSKG (99KG) Salina, Kan.; WIKZ (Z95) Hagerstown, Md., WKZW (KZ93) Peoria, Ill., and WHDQ (Q106) Claremont, N.H. I endorse the inclusion of all of them. Here are a few others:
- WKSF (Kiss 99.9) Asheville, N.C. – “John Stevens had this station sounding larger than life. The music, the jocks, the processing — everything made this station that rocked six Southern states sound better than some large-market stations.”—Carroll Anderson
- WZYP Huntsville, Ala. — “1979-89 was their imperial phase. Everything was on point. Still a good station today.” – Jeremy Pirtle
- KZZU Spokane, Wash. – Chet Buchanan gave the initial shout-out, which prompted Chris Myers to comment: “We got it via cable in Western Canada … It definitely inspired me at a young age to get into radio.”
I’m curious about your small-market favorites. I’m also writing this week about a lot of the feedback to WSQK and what it says about radio now.
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