About Us
The Suncoast Radio story:
Suncoast Radio, Inc. was formed in June 2008 to produce an oldies rock and roll radio program called “The Nostalgia Zone” that aired Friday nights at 7pm on WTAN in Clearwater, FL. The DJ and owner was John Elliott, a veteran broadcaster who had worked at radio stations from Ohio to Florida and Massachusetts to Hawaii. John was also an actor who appeared in several episodes of Magnum PI and Hawaii 5-0 (the originals) and other shows filmed in Hawaii.
After retiring from radio and moving to Florida, the radio bug bit again and I purchased WZCC in Cross City. This station had been off the air for about a year following a lightning strike at the transmitter site. We rebuilt pretty much everything and returned it to the airwaves in 2010. In 2018 we installing a new FM transmitter and antenna at WZCC and began broadcasting on 96.3 FM in addition to the 1240 AM signal
Very quickly it became clear to us that the Tri-County area of Levy-Dixie-Gilchrist counties was a distinct business market separate from the Gainesville-Ocala market where most of the radio stations were owned and operated from. When we heard that WLQH in Chiefland was for sale we jumped at the opportunity to purchase it and its big signal on 940 AM in 2011. We began “simulcasting” both WZCC and WLQH which meant broadcasting the same programming on both stations. Their overlapping coverage allowed our listeners to hear the same programming in Dixie and Levy counties and up into Trenton and surrounding areas in Gilchrist County. We started with the True Oldies Channel and later updated that to Classic Hits.
We learned of a very small FM station in Newberry that was for sale and bought that in 2013. We moved the station from Newberry to Chiefland and got it on the air just in time for the 2013 Chiefland High School football season! That brought our network of stations to four: WLQH AM 940 and FM 93.1 and WZCC AM 1240 and FM 96.3. The combined reach of these signals give us good coverage throughout the Tri-County area. The music format we chose for those stations was “Classic Country”.
In 2024 we had the opportunity to purchase what old timers may remember as WLQH-FM on 107.9. It had been sold off many years ago and went through a couple of owners as WNDN-FM part of the WIND-FM group from Gainesville. We began broadcasting “Classic Rock 107.9” on June 1, 2024 under the new callsign WWCQ-FM. This is our most powerful station with coverage throughout the Tri-County area.
Our goal from Day One was to bring back the “local radio” experience. The first thing we did was bring high school football game broadcasts back featuring the Chiefland Indians. We have also broadcast Dixie County Bears and Trenton Tigers games when they were in post-season play.
Local sportscaster Ken Hutson and his father Coach Harry Hutson are our play by play team. Mike Ridaught produces a special version of his Prep Zone sports program with Aiden Waxman just for our stations featuring all sports on all local schools. Our hourly weather forecasts are produced for the Tri-County area, not Alachua or Marion County, which is especially important for severe weather warnings! We participate in the Emergency Alert System for local, state, and national alerts. Florida news headlines come from the Florida News Network and national news headlines from NBC Radio, Our community bulletin board is a free service for non-profits to announce and promote their events. Sunday mornings we broadcast “Florida Roundtable” produced by the Florida News Network featuring news of interest to Floridians. We also have one of the longest running programs on WLQH, Brother Robert Scott with a bit of preaching and a lot of Gospel music on Sunday mornings!
We are still mainly an entertainment station. WLQH and WZCC play those great classic country songs we all remember hearing on the radio back in the 50’s to the early 90’s. We call this Classic Country Radio and artists include Patsy Cline, Hank Williams Sr. and Jr., George Jones, Buck Owens, and all your old favorites plus newer country stars like Shania Twain and Garth Brooks. We introduced the new Classic Country Radio format in mid 2017 after the passing of local legendary broadcaster Jim Brand and the sale of the station in Trenton he worked at for so many years. When their new owners dropped their Classic County format for another we immediately picked it up to keep those great old country songs on the local airwaves. The big difference with our stations are our DJ’s. Many stations are just like an IPOD on shuffle, songs without any announcement of title or artist just in case you were having a hard time remembering! Our DJ’s also let you know who is still recording or touring, and sadly sometimes they have to tell us of the passing of these legends. Our DJ’s are a big part of the local radio experience. Our #1 DJ is Rowdy Yates, host of Original Country Gold that airs Saturday nights from 7pm – 12 midnight. Rowdy is an American Country Music Award winner and inductee to the Texas Radio Hall of Fame. Rowdy lights up Saturday nights with great music, stories about the songs and artists, promotional giveaways, and call ins for requests. Now that’s the local radio experience!!
The purchase of 107.9 presented yet another opportunity for us. WNDN-FM was part of the WIND-FM (or WYND-FM) group in Gainesville and Ocala broadcasting a classic rock format named Iconic Rock. We knew that many listeners in the Tri-County area tuned into 107.9 so we chose to continue the classic rock format, with what we think are a few good tweaks in the playlist, under the name Classic Rock 107.9!
Local businesses have also benefited from our commitment to local radio. As large media companies bought radio stations and consolidated them into “clusters” around larger cities local stations simply became satellites of the big stations. Local staff was fired and that included sales staff in addition to the DJ’s. There was no one to call on local businesses for advertising and the large media companies were happy to just play their national and regional ads on their small local stations. Other than our weekly newspapers there was no way for local businesses to spread the word about sales or special offers. Suncoast Radio calls on local businesses in the Levy, Dixie, and Gilchrist counties almost exclusively asking for their advertising and getting them on the air 7 days a week on one or even five of our signals to boost their business. And we are doing it at rates they can afford, unlike the big stations charging large market rates. Even for those businesses who could afford those rates their ads were often lost among the many ads being aired for the big city advertisers. We totally support the local Chamber of Commerce Shop Local campaign. And that includes shopping local for radio advertising!