WVIK IN THE QUAD CITIES WILL BE ADDING A SECOND STATION SOON

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Jay Pearce on-air at WVIK

(Image courtesy of the Muscatine Journal)

Jay Pearce, GM of WVIK [link], Rock Island, Illinois has announced that a second signal serving the Quad Cities area is on the way.  According to a report in the Muscatine Journal [link], the tentative data for the new station is October 1, 2019.

Pearce told the Journal:

“It's almost surreal how quickly it came together. This is a calculated risk we hope will pay off with additional listeners, business and corporate sponsors, and donors."

Rock Island is one of about a dozen communities on both sides of the Mississippi River in Iowa and Illinois. Moline, Illinois and Davenport and Bettendorf, Iowa make up the “Quad Cities.” The current population of the metro area is estimated at 450,000.

WVIK has been hoping to add a second station for many years. Now that it will soon be a reality, WVIK is planning schedules for two stations. Pearce told Spark News about the plan:

“We will simulcast the NPR news magazines...but then 90.3 (the main channel) will go to classical music, as it does now) while the new channel features NPR and APM news and talk programs, some of which aren't on the air here now.”

Many stations in similar situations have chosen to split news and classical onto separate stations. But Pearce says a different approach will work in the Quad Cities:

“Some have asked why we don't flip and do it the other way.  Classical on HD/translator and news/talk on 90.3.  Well, yes I have seen the success that others have achieved.  But in our market, I believe our mission of deep involvement in the arts and culture community is correct.  And our classical programming meets our goals.”

WVIK is the only NPR member station based in the Quad Cities and they want to assert their home field advantage. Pearce says that is why local and regional news is so important:

“We have the only radio news department left in a market of two dozen stations.  In 2017 we won the top award for overall excellence from both the Illinois AP and Iowa Broadcast News Association.  We repeated in Iowa last year.”

The second channel means that WVIK will be able to increase its national and international news programming. New programs will include 1A with Joshua Johnson, Here & Now, The Daily and The 21^st, an Illinois statewide news/talk show produced by Illinois Public Media. The BBC World Service will also be heard overnight.

The Quad Cities is a very competitive radio market. 

All three of Iowa Public Radio’s (IPR) can be heard locally. 

IPR’s Studio One (NPR News and AAA) attracts lots of listeners. 

Pearce told Spark News that he thinks WVIK’s audience will grow as the schedule capacity grows:

“The fact of the matter is, our audience has remained relatively flat and we're pretty much maxing out our capacity, per Greater Public benchmarks.” 

WVIK’s second station will be at 105.7 FM. Augustana College, the licensee of WVIK, bought FM translator K289BI in December 2018 for $60,000. Programming will be fed from WVIK-HD2 to the translator at 105.7 FM.

In the Journal’s report, Pearce was optimistic and realistic”

“Will we double our audience? No, but we can reach more people.”