WILS (1320 kHz) is a commercial AM radio station in Lansing, Michigan. It is owned by MacDonald Broadcasting and airs a talk radio format. It features a local news department and a mixture of local and national talk personalities. The studios and offices are on West Cavanaugh Street in Lansing.
WILS is powered at 25,000 watts by day. To protect other stations on AM 1320, it reduces power to 1,900 watts at night. It uses a directional antenna day and night. The transmitter is located off North Green Road in Dimondale.
Programming
WILS is home to the locally produced "Morning Wakeup with Mike Austin". It is heard weekdays, focusing on local issues and politics. The program was formerly hosted by Dave Akerly. Syndicated talk shows round out the rest of the weekday schedule: Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Rick Valdes, Lars Larson, Dennis Prager, Coast to Coast AM and America in the Morning. Weekends include shows on money, health, real estate and technology. Syndicated programs include The Kim Komando Show and Rich DeMuro on Tech. Some weekend hours are paid brokered programming. Most hours begin with world and national news from Fox News Radio.
WILS's talk radio rival is Townsquare Media's WJIM (1240 AM), also licensed to Lansing. WJIM was WILS's main competitor when both were Top 40 stations in the 1960s and 1970s. Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck aired on WJIM prior to 2013, with both shows now on the WILS schedule.
History
Early years
WILS signed on the air on February 19, 1947. It was a daytimer at 1430 kHz with 500 watts of power, and required to go off the air at night. The transmitter for the station was on East Mount Hope Avenue, with studios in downtown Lansing at Saginaw and North Washington.
In March 1950, the station moved to 1320 AM. It increased power to 1,000 watts with a directional antenna array located at 600 W. Cavanaugh Road. In 1952, the Federal Communications Commission granted WILS another increase in its power, this time to 5,000 watts daytime and 1,000 watts nighttime, using separate directional arrays. In 1966, the studios were moved from downtown to the Cavanaugh Road site, where they remain today.
TV stations
The Lansing Broadcasting Company, original owners of WILS, made two attempts to enter the world of television. The first was an unsuccessful UHF station, WILS-TV, which began broadcasts in 1953. A year later, the company leased it to another group, under which it operated as WTOM-TV until its 1956 demise. By that time, WILS was chasing a VHF allotment to Parma and Onondaga, proposing to share time with a station to be run by Michigan State University.
WILS's second and more successful station, WILX-TV channel 10, went on the air March 15, 1959. It was owned by Jackson Telecasters, a company in which Lansing Broadcasting owned a 50 percent stake, along with WJCO radio (AM 1510, now WJKN).
Top 40 era
WILS was a popular Top 40 music station in Lansing during the 1960s and 1970s. One noted WILS personality during the 1960s Top 40 era was John Records Landecker, who later went on to great success at WLS in Chicago, WPHR in Cleveland and CFTR in Toronto. Timmy O' Toole, another popular Chicago radio personality, worked at WILS from 1969 to 1971 before he joined WLUP in 1977. He later was heard weekends on WLS-FM in Chicago. WILS was a fully-staffed live radio station until January 17, 1984, when the station switched to mostly automated programming and was known as Hometown Radio 1320.
The WILS call sign was also shared with a sister station at 101.7 FM, WILS-FM (now WHZZ). From 1967 to 1972,. WILS-AM-FM simulcast a popular Top 40 format. In 1972, WILS-FM flipped to country music. However Jerry Marshall's morning show, which originated on WILS, continued to be heard on WILS-FM as well. Three years later, in 1975, WILS-FM returned to a twelve hour simulcast of the AM station in the daytime, followed by six hours of progressive rock in the evenings and jazz overnight. The rock format was so popular that WILS-FM completely broke away from the AM station in 1978. The station was dubbed Rockradio WILS 101 FM.