WEGP

WEGP
City Presque Isle, Maine
Broadcast area Aroostook County, Maine
Slogan "The Talk of the County"
Frequency 1390 kHz
First air date 1960
Format News Talk Information
Power 25,000 watts day
10,000 watts night
Class B
Facility ID 9423
Transmitter coordinates 46°39′15″N 68°3′0″W / 46.65417°N 68.05000°W / 46.65417; -68.05000
Former callsigns WTMS
Owner The Presence Radio Network, Inc.
Webcast Listen Live

WEGP (1390 AM) is a radio station in Presque Isle, Maine that is temporarily silent. The station is currently owned by The Presence Radio Network, Inc.[1]

History

WEGP went on the air in 1960 and was started by Edward G. Perrier. WEGP gets its name from its founder's initials. At the time, Mr. Perrier was the owner-publisher of the Presque Isle Star-Herald,[2] mistakenly taken for the Engineer for WAGM-TV.[2] When Mr. Perrier decided to start WEGP, WAGM-TV was looking for a way to carry its signal into the Houlton area. In an effort to assist WAGM in broadening their signal range, Mr. Perrier searched for and found land (an old horse pasture) in Presque Isle, Maine. He performed all the required testing and design and presented it to WAGM. WAGM changed hands and the new owners were not interested in using Mr. Perrier's ideas. Mr. Perrier and "Skippy" Caroll (it is believed) decided to put WEGP on the air making WEGP one of the original radio stations in Aroostook County. On March 18, 1994, the station underwent a transformation and changed its call sign to WTMS. After a single day, that change was reversed back and the station became WEGP again.[3]

WEGP went dark for a couple years during the mid-1990s. It was revived in 1997 by Paul Decelles, Owner and President of Decelles Media, Inc. In an effort to broaden the listening audience, WEGP was simulcast from 1997 to April 2007 on WREM. At that time, the LMA with WREM was dropped. In August 2006, WEGP applied for an upgrade of its signal, In late 2007, the upgrade was complete, boosting power from 5,000 watts to 25,000 watts. In August 2010 the station was bought by Gregory McNeil, founder of Northern Maine Broadcasting, Inc. The simulcast with WREM, now known as WXME, was brought back in February 2011.

Ownership of WEGP was taken back by Paul Decelles' Decelles-Smith Media on May 14, 2014. As of March 2015, a "message to our listeners" on the station's web site said the station was off air pending a sale and the programming could be heard via each show's web sites.[4] It was reported in April 2015 that the station had been sold to the Presence Radio Network [5] The sale was consummated on August 14, 2015, at a purchase price of $67,500.

References

  1. ↑ "WEGP Facility Record". United States Federal Communications Commission, audio division.
  2. 1 2 Everett, Dan (30 September 2015). "Viewpoints: Radio Station Founder Had Newspaper Roots". Star-Herald.
  3. ↑ "WEGP Call Sign History". United States Federal Communications Commission, audio division.
  4. ↑ http://184.154.24.58/~wegp0329/index.php/events Message to our listeners
  5. ↑ http://www.fybush.com/nerw-20150406/ Northeast Radio Watch 4/6/15
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