City | Blairsville, Pennsylvania |
---|---|
Broadcast area |
Indiana, Pennsylvania Blairsville, Pennsylvania Latrobe, Pennsylvania |
Branding | "Cat Country 106.3" |
Slogan | "Today's Best Country!" |
Frequency | 106.3 (MHz) |
First air date | September 13, 1982 (as WCQO) |
Format | Current and Classic Country |
ERP | 2,400 Watts |
HAAT | 111 meters |
Class | A |
Facility ID | 38376 |
Callsign meaning |
We Love CountrY or Lucky (WLCY's former on-air branding) |
Affiliations | CMT |
Owner | Renda Broadcasting (The St. Pier Group, LLC) |
Website | http://www.country1063fm.com/ |
WLCY is a country music formatted radio station serving Indiana, Cambria, Armstrong and Westmoreland Counties in Pennsylvania. This station broadcasts in a format playing today's best country highlighted by throwback country hits.
The Cat County 106.3 FM format began in February 2006.
On air personalities are Andy Hart on mornings, Jim DeCesare on mid-days, and Chuck Clark in the afternoon. Syndicated programming includes "CMT's Country Countdown USA" with Lon Helton, "American Country Countdown with Kix Brooks", "America's Grand Ole Opry Weekend", and "Racing Country USA".
WLCY is the voice of the Blairsville High School sports. WLCY has broadcast every Bobcat football game since 1983. The station also broadcasts various Bobcat basketball games.
The 106.3 license originally signed on as WCQO-FM ("CQO" being the initials of station founder Ada Ottie's daughter Constance Quinn) with a "Music of Your Life" format featuring music of the 1930s and 1940s. Charles Rutledge served as vice president and general manager of Blairsville Broadcasting Company, Inc., the original licensee, while Constance Quinn Ottie served as the station's operations manager.
The station broadcast from a two-story wood-framed house at the intersection of Routes 22 and 119 in Burrell Township, just outside the Blairsville borough limits. The ground floor housed the on-air and production studios, with sales and administrative offices on the top floor.
During these early years, the station broadcast a locally produced polka show, hosted by Mark Bertig, a Grammy-award winning polka musician who led the band "The Polish Friends" from the late 1970s to early 1980s. He would leave in 1985, only to return in 2002 to manage this station and three of its competitors under subsequent purchases by its present owner.
On April 15, 1985, the station was purchased by former WAMO-FM general manager Ray Gusky (dba WNQQ, Inc.), who rebranded the station with the call sign WNQQ-FM and adopted a hybrid AC /Music of Your Life format. Billed as "Wink-FM," the station added specialty programming, such as a locally based oldies program on Saturdays, "Jukebox Saturday Night with D.P. McIntire" (who would decades later re-emerge as general manager of 101.9 WKRP in Raleigh, North Carolina. as well as a Sunday morning program featuring Irish folk music, "C'eol N'harran with Nancy Lee."