Twenty-three
years after he put “The Blaze” on the air, Chris Devine is back in business on
Chicago radio.
With the
flip of a switch at 9 p.m. Friday, Devine launched a contemporary jazz outlet
on 103.9 FM, a broadcast translator licensed to Windy City Broadcasting. The
signal also is carried on Hubbard Radio’s WTMX 101.9 HD2, the secondary digital
audio channel linked to the modern adult-contemporary station.
“It’s
been fun having an association with a Chicago station again,” Devine said in an
interview Sunday. “It’s the first new frequency that’s emerged in the market in
a long time.”
Describing
his role with Windy City Broadcasting as advisory, Devine has assembled a team
that includes veteran Chicago radio programmers Dave Logan and Rick O’Dell and
sales executive Robert McAuliff. To accommodate the move, the company has
leased the HD2 channel from Hubbard Radio that previously carried O’Dell’s
SmoothJazzChicago.net. O’Dell serves as operations manager for the new station.
For the
first three weeks on the air, Devine said, the station will be airing “jazzy
Christmas” music 20 hours a day. In addition, it will feature spoken-word
programming promoting the Bluhm Cardiovascular Institute at Northwestern
Memorial Hospital from 6 to 8 a.m. and from 5 to 7 p.m. daily.
That’s
all leading up to the station’s official debut December 26. “We’re going to
launch more of an urbanized-type contemporary jazz,” said Devine, who
identified the target audience as adults between 25 and 64. “It won’t be quite
as sleepy or soft as [O’Dell’s smooth jazz] format has been. We’re going to
call it ‘The Groove.’ ”
Initially
broadcasting from atop the John Hancock Center at 15 watts, the station is
expected to increase its power to 99 watts, according to a petition Devine
plans to file next week with the Federal Communications Commission. The boost
should expand the station’s coverage throughout the metropolitan area within 90
days.
Led by
John Bridge, a real estate investor from west suburban Sugar Grove, Windy City
Broadcasting acquired the construction permit for the translator at 103.9
W280EM for $1 million last July.
Devine,
a New Jersey native who grew up in Chicago, first came to prominence here in
1991 when his Major Broadcasting Corp. acquired the former WFYR FM 103.5 for
$19 million and transformed it into WWBZ, a hard rock outlet known as “The
Blaze.” Two years later he sold the station for $32 million to Evergreen Media
Corp., which rechristened it WRCX.
He later
ran Marathon Media for aging multimillionaire C. Robert Allen, investing in a
variety of broadcast entities, special events and other interests. But the
company dissolved after Allen’s heirs sued Devine for racketeering, fraud and
embezzlement. “It’s all been settled and put to bed,” Devine said, dismissing
reports of criminal charges against him as “uninformed.”
Devine
most recently has headed GeoBroadcast Solutions, a company he founded in 2009
to market technologies that help radio broadcasters target commercials to
specific segments within their signal areas.
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