WLXT
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WLXT 96.3 Petoskey, MI is an adult contemporary-formatted radio station that broadcasts with 100,000 watts, covering most of northern Michigan. It's owned by Trish MacDonald-Garber, whose family has owned the station for over 30 years.
The station signed on in the late 1960s at 96.7, only broadcasting with 3,000 watts and airing beautiful music. The station was originally WMBN-FM, owned by Les Biederman's Midwestern Broadcasting Company of Traverse City, MI, and mostly simulcasted WMBN-AM 1340. In the 1970s, Biederman wanted to boost the signals of his Traverse City stations, ordering him to divest most of his other properties due to FCC rules and regulations. He sold WMBN-AM/FM to Kenneth MacDonald, a friend of his who owned stations in Saginaw and Lansing. MacDonald had a cottage in the Petoskey area, and accepted the offer to purchase WMBN.
MacDonald trained his children, Andy, Ken, Jr. (aka "Mac") and Patricia ("Trish") to run successful stations like he did, and put young 20-something Trish in charge of WMBN. Under her rule, WMBN changed its call sign to WWPZ and flipped to an early version of the adult hits Jack-FM format. WPZ played everything from oldies to classic rock, funk to Top 40 hits, mostly with Dennis Martin (Corpe) programming the station. They also aired The Larry King Show at night. WMBN, however, remained beautiful music, using the slogan "Michigan's Beautiful North." WPZ also aired sports, like Tigers baseball.
It was also around that time that WMBN-FM flipped to 96.3 and boosted its power to 100 kW. WMBN remained beautiful music throughout most of the 1980s, and got strong adults numbers in the Northwest Michigan ratings. The station was automated most of the time, including a voicetracked night shift from owner Ken MacDonald himself. Sadly, Ken passed in 1989, and for a while, the station still aired his taped show. Jim Scollin did a live morning drive show for many years in the 1980s.
In 1990, Trish decided to flip WMBN-FM to its current format, AC as Lite 96. The station's music became more contemporary, and aimed for a slightly younger audience. Meanwhile, the beautiful music moved to 1340, which flipped back to the WMBN call letters. WMBN-AM 1340 continues to go by the name "Michigan's Beautiful North" and now airs an Adult Standards music format satellite-fed from Westwood One.
In the mid-1990s, Trish purchased WWLZ 96.7 in Cadillac, MI, changing the station from CHR to a simulcast of WMBN-FM, which changed its call letters to WLXT to match its Lite 96 name. 96.7 became WLXV.
In 2002, the WLXT/WLXV simulcast ended when Trish decided that Cadillac, a town with six stations and five of them being simulcasts of other stations (and the one that wasn't, WATT-AM 1240, being mainly syndicated talk), needed a music station to call its own. She flipped WLXV to a hot AC format as Mix 96. (In early 2003, WLXV gained a sister station also solely serving the Cadillac market in WKAD-FM "Oldies 93.7," airing a syndicated '60s/'70s oldies format from Jones Radio Networks.)
Today, Lite 96 is the AC ratings leader in northern Michigan even though they've lost some audience to other stations such as smooth jazz WJZQ and AC WSRT. Like Detroit's WNIC and numerous other AC stations, WLXT features mainly 1970s and 1980s AC and pop hits on its "Flashback Weekends."
During the 80's & 90's Trish was best known as the "dragon lady"
