Radio station in Marathon, Florida
WFFG
(1300
AM
) is an American radio station licensed to operate in
Marathon, Florida
, United States, in the
Florida Keys
, broadcasting a news/talk format.
History
[
edit
]
First licensed in 1960, the station was a 500-watt, four-tower directional station built on an uninhabited island in the Florida Keys. Telephone and electrical services were run to the island, exclusively for the station. A drawbridge was built for convenient transportation.
The original owners were Kentucky broadcasters, Bill Betts and Gilmore Nunn, who vacationed in Marathon. In the early 1960s they sold the station to Kentucky financier Garvis Kincaid where it became part of the Bluegrass Broadcasting chain, headquartered in
Lexington, Kentucky
.
Bluegrass sold the station to a former Michigan legislator and local resident, Emil Lockwood. Lockwood retained the station for less than three years before selling to competitors, the Thacker family, who then owned WMUM-FM, a music station in
Marathon
.
The Thackers upgraded the station to 2,500 watts with a two tower directional signal. They sold both the AM and FM stations to Joe Nascone, a local resident formerly from
Pennsylvania
.
While the
FCC
database states that the station's transmitter tower is located on
Boot Key
, as well as the transmitter for
Radio Marti
. Radio Marti is actually on Sister's Creek Island, adjacent to Boot Key and inside the Marathon City limits.
[
citation needed
]
As of July 2007, the station's programming consists of
news/talk
, including syndicated programming of
Rush Limbaugh
,
Sean Hannity
,
G. Gordon Liddy
and
Bill O'Reilly
.
The station was most recently owned by Jonathan Smith's Choice Radio Keys Corporation. Due to an inability to pay outstanding debts, the company assigned the licenses of WFFG and sister stations
WGMX
,
WKEY-FM
, and
WKEZ-FM
to a trustee on June 4, 2018, to be sold for the benefit of creditors. A sale of WFFG and WGMX to Joseph Nascone's The Great Marathon Radio Company was consummated on September 14, 2020, at a price of $35,000.
References
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]
External links
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]
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24°41′28″N
81°06′30″W
/
24.69111°N 81.10833°W
/
24.69111; -81.10833