(This is a work-in-progress. All who contribute will be credited.)

Once upon a time, there was a great little radio station in west Michigan called WKLQ. In the late 90s and early 00s, they were one of the most-dominant radio stations in Grand Rapids.

The secret to KLQ's success was that they had Howard Stern in the morning and great jocks and great music the rest of the day. KLQ's jocks were the type you'd like to hang out at the bar with and have a conversation with. KLQ was truely a station that was all over and people loved it.

At one time, KLQ even ran promos proudly proclaiming that they were anti-corporate rock. Sadly, it was a corporation, and a man named Matt Hanlon who put KLQ's glory days to a halt.

Today, KLQ is now a shell of what it once was. They now air Stern clones Opie and Anthony mornings and unimportant jocks throughout the day. Not to mention, the music now skewers older, too, with 80s bands that have overstayed their welcome.

Now, we present an essay on the rise and fall of one of Grand Rapids' most-legendary stations. From its beginnings as a religious station to its glory days to a station that only barely makes it into the top ten in the Arbitron.

PRE-STERN

WKLQ began its life decades ago as WJBL, a station owned by three men: John, Bud and Len. All I know is that it was a religious station and religious book publisher Zondervan was a one-time owner. In 1984, the station was sold to Michigan Media, and the station went secular as WKLQ, at first playing top 40 music. During this time, WGRD (97.9) was the CHR king in the area. By the late 80s, KLQ was AOR and mornings were handled by Rick Beckett, Scott Winters and Darla Jaye. The station rose in the ratings thanks to the trio's popularity. However, they were lured away by WGRD, now alternative, in the mid-90s. KLQ began to fall severely in the ratings.

In 1996, fed up with poor ratings, KLQ management decided to get a last resort: Howard Stern. Stern's popularity was growing nationwide and conservative Grand Rapids would be a great test market for Stern's show. As a result, KLQ quickly shot up in the ratings, while the station promoted his program. However, there was a great deal of controversy was several religious groups - such as Bill Johnson's American Decency Association - started boycotting the station's advertisers for airing Stern's daily banter. As a result, KLQ kept Stern, but had him on a lower profile. Also, the station would be notorious for airing music during Stern's then-lengthy breaks. However, the station's GM, Bart Brandimiller, had plans to keep Stern dur to his audience and good word from what little advertisers Stern had in the morning.

By 1998, KLQ had transitioned itself to alternative. Shortly thereafter, they went to their current active rock format. Citadel purchased Michigan Media in 2000, along with oldies WODJ 107.3, classic rock WLAV 96.9 and sports WBBL 1340.

In the early 2000s, KLQ enjoyed high ratings and a tight race with Rick, Darla and Scott on 'GRD. In 2002, Brandimiller signed Stern to a muilti-year deal with the station, giving fans a sigh of relief.

However, Bart retired, and the Hanlon era was around the corner.

In 2002, Matt Hanlon, a New Yorker who worked for AOL for years, took over the General Manager position at Citadel. He noticed that Stern wasn't a big money-maker for the company, so he tried to bury him and all things failed. At Christmastime 2002, KLQ ran a 'three-peat' weekend; music was played in the morning, and KLQ jocks were telling listeners that Stern had 'temporarily' moved to WBBL. However, the move was concrete. KLQ was still playing music in the AM while Stern was hacked away at 1340. In January 2003, Infinity locked out their feed of the Stern show to WBBL, citing that he violated the company's contract by moving the show without Infinity's permission. However, the two kissed and made-up, and Stern was back later that month.

Meanwhile, KLQ was without a morning show, except for Tom "The Wiz" Stavrou playing music. As for WBBL and Stern, listeners complained on how the show was handled. Amongst the problems were that New York promos were heard, the cutting into the show in mid-sentance and worse of all, the fact that the station cut Stern off in mid-sentance at 10 a.m. sharp so they could get to regular ESPN sports programming.

Some rumors had it that KLQ was trying to get Rick and Scott (Darla's no longer in GR) - both fired from GRD - to do mornings. They ended up at WOOD-AM 1300 instead. For months, the station was the laughing stock of Grand Rapids radio for not having a feasable morning show. Then came two has-beens from Seattle.

In 2003, after months of no morning show, KLQ finally unleashed their new morning show, Ron and Don. The two started in Dallas at KLLI but were fired due to low ratings. They ended up at KQBZ/Seattle but had the lowest-rated morning show in the entire market. The hiring of people like Ron and Don, along with Kevin Matthews and ex-WLHT 95.7 jocks Dave and Geri made Hanlon famous for having an eye for has-beens.

Probably one of his most-famous hires was that of "Huge" Bill Simonson, who was fired from WMVP/ESPN1000 Chicago due to poor ratings. Prior to that, he was at Austin, TX's KJFK (and mind you, Austin's a much bigger market than Grand Rapids). In 1997 while he was at KJFK - a Stern affiliate that also aired Tom Leykis, G. Gordon Liddy and Art Bell and is now a Spanish station - he was sued for slandering a woman, claiming that she stripped and gave lap dances at parties. The woman, Debby Wilie claimed that she was humiliated and hurt by Huge's claims; she was even afraid of losing her job due to Huge's lies. As a result, the Texas Supreme Court ordered Huge and KJFK parent Times-Shamrock to pay Wilie $455,000.

According to Huge, he claims that one reason for Stern's move was to help WBBL's finances. After all, he was getting paid $75,000 yearly to spread his huge ego onto the city of Grand Rapids on a station whose signal dies as soon as you leave city limits. He's one of the most-overhyped radio personalities in Grand Rapids; The Loeks Theatre chain even has a popcorn-and-pop combo named after him, "The Huge Combo".

Around that time, KLQ became the originating home of "Man-Made Radio", a show starring Hunter Scott and Sean Kelly that started at sister station WKQZ/Saginaw and had great ratings there, however, KLQ listeners didn't seem to care. As a result, KLQ's ratings tumbled severely... 70% as a matter of fact. Proving that Hanlon was an idiot for trying to kill Stern while he, on a puny 1KW peashooter, had higher ratings than Ron and Don on KLQ.

Man-Made Radio wasn't that much better. First of all, Hanlon made the mistake of firing PD Mark "The Head" Feurie and replacing him with Man-Made host Hunter Scott. As a result, KLQ started playing less music and more talk. To make matters worse, popular KLQ jock Cristi Cantle was reduced to the name "Cackin' Cristi" because she would be on the air from Man-Made at 3 pm and would be on til midnight, thanks to the magic known as voicetracking. (ed's note: According to Cristi, she was live the whole time - 9 hours per night)

With KLQ's ratings in the shitter, Scott and the rest of Man-Made Radio were fired. The duo moved to Lexington, KY and ended up with Cristi in Cleveland at WMMS handling mornings where they eventually were fired.

With Cristi and Head leaving the station, it was like The Beatles breaking up. Bill Walters was a victim as well just for blasting his own station at events. When he would talk about a part of KLQ that sucked, people applauded like crazy.

THE AIRHEAD ARISES, AND RON AND DON MOVE AND GET CANNED

With Hunter Scott out of the PD chair, KLQ hired big market vet Darren Arriens to handle the station's programming. Under Darren, the station would focus more on music and less talk. However, he would be under scrutny for making KLQ sound older. Arriens, the mastermind behind Lansing alt-rocker WVIC in the 90s, decided to make KLQ more mainstream-sounding with more 80s bands added to the playlist. Many longtime KLQ fans were unhappy with Arriens' decision to add more hair bands to the mix, such as Aerosmith, Motley Crue and Poison.

Meanwhile, Ron and Don, complete with no ratings to show for, moved to New Orleans' KKND (ironically, another former Stern affiliate) while KLQ continued to carry their show. Another station in Oklahoma City carried the show, but almost immediately canceled it. In 2004, Ron and Don were fired from KKND and KLQ as well. Another new morning show search came.

In late 2004, Hanlon hired Justice and Jim, two people who've never met each other from Atlanta and Tampa, to do mornings at KLQ. Not even that show could help KLQ's sloppy ratings. So, Hanlon decided to move KLQ from its longtime home at 94.5 to 107.3 while the 94.5 slot became another low-rated disaster, country station WTNR/Thunder 94.5. The victim was oldies WODJ/107.3, but Grand Rapidians regained an oldies station later that week, Regent's WFGR 98.7. So far, ratings did not improve.

Then, the answer to all of Hanlon's prayers were answered when his boss at Citadel, Fahrid Suhlman, ordered all of their stations to cancel the Stern show. Matt complied by replacing Stern on WBBL with ESPN radio. Needless to say, that didn't even help WKLQ one bit.

Then, in the summer of 2005, while Hanlon was on vacation, Justice and Jim decided to do one of the sickest stunts in Grand Rapids radio history. With a rash of child drownings, the two told their audience that they were going to drown a puppy in an undisclosed lake the day after. There were a flood of calls coming into 911, and the day after, J&J told their listeners that it was all only a scam. Instead of canning or suspending J&J, Hanlon praised the duo for giving the station free publicity.

In July 2006, Jim was fired from the KLQ morning show, leaving only Justice at the helm, however, he was only there for one week as KLQ and a bunch of other Citadel stations started carrying Opie and Anthony's morning show. Justice is now working in another capacity at Citadel while Jim's on the beach.

Opie and Anthony are the Stern clones whose careers were cut short at CBS when they had a middle-aged couple have sex in a Catholic Church in 2003. They ended up at XM where the two's radio show had very little listeners. One reason why they ended up back at CBS Radio in the first place was due to many reasons, such as the loss of revenue caused by Stern's departure to Sirius and better cross-promotion for their XM show. Citadel inked an agreement to bring O&A to several of their stations, KLQ included.

Most of O&A's listeners tend to be immature; the duo unleashed a campaign called "Assault on the Media" where they tell their minions to go on camera during a live report on the TV news and promote O&A. One WABC-TV news reporter ended up partially deaf when one fan blasted an airhorn in his ear.

Only time will tell if Opie and Anthony will be the saving grace of WKLQ, but one thing's fo' shizzle: KLQ will forever be damaged goods as long as they're still on the air. In Hanlon's four years of running KLQ, he's had four morning shows and only one jock from the station's early 2000s glory days is still there. Plus, with Stern on Sirius and many former KLQ fans also tuning to WGRD and their Free Beer and Hot Wings morning show, it looks like KLQ's days should be numbered.

Fortunately, Hanlon's no longer the GM at Citadel/Grand Rapids, but he's now the midwest VP. He still calls the shots, and KLQ still loses. As of Spring 07, KLQ is now the third-lowest FM in all of Grand Rapids.

(Updated 4.18.08)