| *What's this site's history? Chuck69.com started on July 1st, 1999 as a site called Bring Howard Stern to Northern Michigan Radio and TV. Despite being the third-most-listened-to radio host nationally, Stern had nearly zero presence in the Traverse City area. Unfair, since most of the talk radio in the area is your basic right-winged totalitarian who blames life's problems on the 'liberal media'. Well, in July 2002, I moved to the Grand Rapids area, where Stern was heard on first WKLQ (then at 94.5) then WBBL 1340 from Xmas 2002-New Years 2005. Now, with Stern on Sirius, ANYBODY in northern Michigan and Grand Rapids can now hear Stern legally. *Can I get the audio feed of Stern's show over the web? Yes you can, if you're a Sirius subscriber. *What the dilly-o about WBBL? Who's Huge? Hanlon? You'll see these words time-to-time on this site. At Christmastime in 2002, the Stern show unexpectedly moved to WBBL 1340 here in Grand Rapids from WKLQ 94.5. WBBL is a 1,000-watt Sports station with a five-mile radius, while WKLQ was a 50KW Active Rocker with a signal hearable from Howard City to south of Kalamazoo. Since WBBL started carrying the show, they butchered it beyond belief. They even cut off the show at 10am so they could go to lame ESPN radio.
Hanlon is the moronic GM of WKLQ and WBBL. It's because of him that KLQ's overall product has suffered horrendously since Stern's departure to staticky AM. Ron and Don are basically lame Stern clones, and they spin the crap out of Billy Squier (who?) and Def Leppard all day. All of KLQ's employees are nothing more than Hanlon yes-men. Huge is basically Howard Cosell on crack cocaine. He's a has-been from Chicago who cried for Hanlon to give him a job. His show is mostly a bunch of ads for Little Caesar's and Miller Beer and almost no sports. He even reads all of WBBL's ads, making commercial breaks during the Stern show in GR unlistenable. His show's syndicated by the money-losing Michigan Talk Radio Network, mostly to AM stations 250 watts or less. **Update 2.05** WBBL and all Citadel stations have canned Stern. KLQ now carries the "Justice and Jim" show, which is downright horrid. **Update 11.07**
Stern's now on Sirius, and WKLQ carries Opie and Anthony. They are now the 3rd-lowest-rated FM station in Grand Rapids behind WFUR and WMAX. *Where's former WGRD jock Suzy Cole? *Do you STILL like/endorse testical radio? A part of me does. Overall, I avoid Grand Rapids radio at most costs, but there's a LOT of great people who work in testical radio, so I have to endorse them (some of them are friends on my MySpace profile). Probably my current favorite station here in the Grand Rapids area is WION 1430 in Ionia, which is a community-minded AC/oldies/classic rock hybrid. The station's impressive for having a small budget and a small staff. *What's your favorite Sirius music channels? Octane, First Wave, Liquid Metal, Alt Nation and Faction. Outlaw Country rocks, too. I even enjoy their "Beautiful Music" (or elevator music) station, Escape. *(A girl asked me this one:) Why do you call your website Chuck69.com? It's offensive.
Because even though I'm in my 20's, I find girls gross and disgusting... Just kidding. The truth is that I created this website when I was a high schooler, and the name stuck. My name is Chuck, and the number 69 was fashionable. Now that I'm in my 20's, you know, I kinda agree -- it's somewhat childish. However, look at MTV: even though they haven't played much in the way of music videos since 1986, they're still referred to "Music Television". The supermarket chain A&P is still formally called The Great and Atlantic Tea Company, even though they sell more than just tea. Hell, there's a supermarket in Glen Arbor, MI called Anderson's Market whose URL's www.andersonsiga.com, even though they dropped IGA as their supplier a few years ago. I could change my website's name, but that would mean sending countless e-mails to the people who link to this site, changing this, that and everything else. I just don't want to go through that trouble, so that means simply that my teenage past will stick with me for some time to come... *Why is Sirius now censoring their music, especially on the Hip-Hop channels and Lithium?
Good question. When Lithium was totally Sirius, they bleeped nothing. Now that the merger between Sirius and XM's complete, Sirius killed XM's version of Lithium, Lucy, and replaced that with a new version of Lithium. Back when XM and Sirius were seperate, XM had an "XL" rating for channels that contained "Xtreme Language". Despite the fact that a lot of music from the 1990's contained profanity, XM did not give Lucy an "XL" rating, meaning that the channel was suitable for family listening. However, when the merger completed, Lithium apparently got Lucy's backlog from D.C. and is now playing it. Pretty much the same goes for the other affected channels. Whether or not if Sirius will restore the censored versions of the now-bleeped songs is up to Sirius and not us. If you, like me is pissed over Sirius's decision, contact them by going to their website.
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