The station formally signed on March 11, 1965, as WKNT, owned by the publisher of the Kent Ravenna
Record-Courier newspaper; from the beginning, WKNT simulcast full-time with
WKNT-FM (100.1), which had commenced operations three years earlier. Both stations were purchased by Media-Com, Inc. in July 1971. For its entire existence, the station operated at a transmitter site in
Franklin Township with a maximum power output of 1,000 watts, using a six-tower, daytime-only directional antenna pattern. Due to
WINW in
Canton, Ohio, operating at the same frequency within a distance of from WKNT, both stations were engineered to have their signals avoid overlap with each other, pushing WKNT's signal into the
Akron metro area and limited coverage in parts of
Greater Cleveland.
Howie Chizek began his long career with WKNT and its FM successor on June 3, 1974, after previous stops at
WBBW in
Youngstown and at
Ohio University's student-run radio station. For much of the 1970s, Chizek hosted two daily programs:
Buy, Sell, Swap and Trade in the late mornings, followed by
The Howie Chizek Show, a
phone-in talk radio show in the midday hours. Stan Piatt also joined WKNT and WKNT-FM as morning host in 1978. Both Piatt and Chizek's programs were moved to WNIR; Chizek would remain at the station until his death on June 16, 2012. After years of declining ratings, two of WKNT's three announcers were fired in early September 1988, but management claimed the station would continue with the country format. Despite those claims, WKNT changed format to
oldies on November 11, 1988, as "Super Oldies 1520"; station vice president Bill Klaus claimed the switch would "fill a void" in the market with
WHK ()'s imminent format switch from oldies to
financial news. The format switch was to have included a call sign change to WHTS, but that call belonged to a
United States Coast Guard icebreaker. Klaus then offered the stations' audience a chance to vote between WOLZ (for "oldiez") and WJMP (for "jump") via
mail-in ballot, WJMP won out and became the call sign on March 15, 1989. Despite those changes, WJMP failed to show in the local
Arbitron ratings books, and the station flipped to
sports radio on March 1, 1993, utilizing programming from the American Sports Network. When the
1994 Major League Baseball season ended prematurely due to labor unrest on August 12, 1994, WJMP engaged in
stunting by playing two different versions of
Take Me Out to the Ball Game, in a continuous loop, from sunrise to sunset. The brainchild of Bill Klaus, WJMP's stunt merited national and international attention; Craig Hankin, who produced one of the two versions WJMP played, approved of the idea. Klaus also encouraged people to submit their own renditions of the song in order to help relieve the monotony. Despite the attention received, the stunt failed to register any ratings for WJMP once the sports radio format resumed, and the station switched to an audio relay of co-owned
low-power television station
W29AI (channel 29) in April 1995, this included W29AI's slate of locally produced talk shows and music videos. WJMP changed to a standards format using the
Music of Your Life service on June 11, 2001, this came in the wake of
WRMR () in Cleveland announcing plans to change formats to sports radio the following month. The adult standards format was dropped for
Air America Radio programming in 2004, WJMP subsequently dropped Air America in July 2005 in favor of
Fox Sports Radio programming after WTOU () switched from all-sports to progressive talk as
WARF. On June 8, 2009, WJMP dropped its all-sports format and became a talk radio station, carrying an entirely syndicated slate of programming. At the end, WJMP was the Akron affiliate of
Mancow in the Morning,
The Laura Ingraham Show,
The Savage Nation, and
The Dennis Miller Show, and also carried
CBS News Radio newscasts hourly. WJMP permanently shut down operations on July 31, 2016. The next day, the station's license was returned to the FCC for cancellation. The towers were later dismantled, and FM sister WNIR continues to broadcast from studios at this location today. ==References==