WOAP
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| City | Owosso, Michigan |
|---|---|
| Broadcast area | [1] Mid-Michigan |
| Branding | The O |
| Frequency | 1080 kHz C-QUAM AM Stereo |
| Translator(s) | 103.1 W276CZ (Saginaw) |
| First air date | January 1, 1948 |
| Format | Adult Hits |
| Power | 1,000 watts (Daytime) 250 watts (W276CZ) |
| Class | D |
| Facility ID | 41682 |
| Callsign meaning | Owosso Argus Press (original owner) |
| Owner | Sima Birach (Birach Broadcasting Corporation) |
| Webcast | WOAP Webstream |
| Website | WOAP Online |
WOAP (1080 AM) is a radio station broadcasting an Adult Hits format featuring popular music from the 1960s to the present day. Licensed to Owosso, Michigan, it first began broadcasting in 1948. The station's 1,000-watt signal reaches outlying areas of the Flint, Saginaw/Bay City and Lansing markets and carries beyond westward almost to Grand Rapids, southward to Ann Arbor, and eastward into the Thumb area. While the station is licensed to operate during daylight hours only, it streams its programming over the Internet around the clock. WOAP also operates a 250-watt FM translator which simulcasts WOAP and broadcasts 24 hours a day to the immediate Owosso and Corunna areas. (Although licensed to Saginaw, the translator's signal does not reach Saginaw.)
WOAP was founded as an AM/FM combo station by the local Argus-Press newspaper. The call letters stand for Owosso Argus-Press. As the AM station was, and still is, a daytime-only station, the FM station was intended to provide full-time service to the Owosso area. But at that time, there were very few FM radios so WOAP-FM went silent by 1953. A decade later, there were enough FM radios in circulation to allow WOAP-FM to return to the air on December 2, 1965.
Because the Argus-Press monopolized media in the Owosso area at that time with its daily newspaper and two radio stations, the Federal Communications Commission forced the Argus-Press to sell the radio stations in 1987.
The FM station was later known as WMZX and is known today as WRSR. In the late 1990s, the Michigan Radio Group sold both stations. Connoisseur Communications then assumed ownership of both, turning WMZX into a more regional station serving the Flint area while still licensed to Owosso (the station is now part of Cumulus Broadcasting's Flint cluster). WOAP adopted an adult standards music format in 1995 after WFDF 910 AM dropped the format in favor of talk. The weaker WOAP, with its daytime-only signal, was then sold the following year to Hartman Broadcasting, which continued to operate WOAP as a local service, retaining the standards format and imaging it as Great American Classics.
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