KQQZ
KQQZ was a commercial AM radio station that was licensed to serve Fairview Heights, Illinois, United States, on, and broadcast from 1968 to 2020. The transmitter site was located in the town of Pontoon Beach, Illinois.
KQQZ first broadcast in 1968 as KHAD, a station licensed to De Soto, Missouri. For its first 30 years, KHAD primarily broadcast country music and talk shows. A potential sale to the Rev. Larry Rice was terminated in 2000 after a fire destroyed KHAD's studios and transmitter. Eventually, the Radio Free Texas Trust bought KHAD, changed its call sign to KRFT, and operated KRFT as a sports talk station. The sports format continued until 2010, when financial losses and the Great Recession forced the owners to sell the station.
The station's license, and the licenses of three other co-owned stations in Greater St. Louis, were revoked by the Federal Communications Commission on March 20, 2020, after it was revealed that the principal ownership—Entertainment Media Trust—was set up as a shell company for a convicted felon, Robert S. Romanik, who operated the stations under the "Insane Broadcasting Company" name. Despite the cancellation, Romanik continued to broadcast without a valid license on the frequency until April 12, 2020. While having carried a classic country format to the end of its existence, KQQZ also aired a controversial daily talk radio show hosted by Romanik, the content of which led to additional license challenges for having potentially violated federal law against broadcasting obscenities.
History
Early years in De Soto
This station began operations as KHAD on November 1, 1968, originally licensed to serve De Soto, Missouri. KHAD was a 1,000-watt daytime-only station owned by the DeSoto Broadcasting Company, a six-person partnership whose principals included Pinkney Cole. In 1969, KHAD broadcast 20 hours of country music a week. By 1970, KHAD affiliated with the Mutual Broadcasting System and played 70 hours of country music a week. By 1974, KHAD added middle of the road music and talk shows to its lineup.In 1976, KHAD had news and talk shows in addition to country music. On December 13, 1977, KHAD strengthened its power from 1,000 to 5,000 watts and remained a daytime-only station.
KHAD was sold in 1981 to the Jefferson County Broadcasting Company—a joint operation between Pinkney and Judy Cole and Erich and Arlene Schafermeyer. The company maintained the previous Mutual Broadcasting System affiliation, with talk shows and middle of the road music through the end of the decade. The station was sold again in 1990 to Jefferson Communications. As of 1992, KHAD had a talk and country music format, with 12 hours of gospel and three hours of bluegrass weekly. In 1993, KHAD was sold to Big River Broadcasting, and to Schafermeyer Broadcasting in 1996 after Erich and Arlene Schafermeyer purchased the remaining shares owned by the Coles; son Kim Schafermeyer assumed the role of principal owner and handled the day-to-day operations of both KHAD and FM adjunct KDJR, which took to the air in 1990. The 1997 Broadcasting Yearbook listed KHAD as a "traditional country" music station.
Following months of negotiations in the fall of 1999, Schafermeyer Broadcasting reached an agreement to sell KHAD to the Rev. Larry Rice, founder and then-owner of St. Louis television station KNLC, for $225,000. Rice had planned to change KHAD's call sign to KCBW and have the station be operated in tandem with a free store in De Soto that his New Life Evangelistic Center ministry was planning to open. On January 27, 2000, the day before the sale was to have closed, an early-morning fire destroyed the studios and transmitter facilities, resulting in the deal being postponed, then called off entirely. Arson was suspected as a likely cause for the fire by area law enforcement, but no arrests were made.
Shortly after the fire, the general manager for both stations filed a complaint with the Jefferson County, Missouri, prosecuting attorney after her last paycheck had bounced; Rice had also been approached by people in phone calls and letters regarding debts owned by the stations. An attorney representing Erich and Arlene Schafermeyer admitted to the debts, but did not specify the exact amounts owed. Kim Schafermeyer had been estranged from his parents since the preceding June over real estate matters; consequently, neither parent had any involvement—nor were informed about—the sales for either station, and both considered the deals "fishy" and "messed-up".
Move to St. Louis
in the wake of the arson attack, the Radio Free Texas Trust acquired the license to KHAD in April 2000 for $125,000, changing the call sign to KRFT. The station's transmitter was relocated to a new five-tower site near Collinsville, Illinois, and changed its city of license to University City, serving the Greater St. Louis area. The facility changes were possible after WOWO in Fort Wayne, Indiana, relinquished their Class I-B clear channel status in favor of a regional Class B status, thus removing a direct obligation for this station to adjust their service contours or sign off at night to protect WOWO's nighttime skywave. While KRFT was also capable of adding nighttime service, this required a separate array of towers to be constructed and additional authorization by the FCC, which was not deemed feasible at the time.Missouri Sports Radio, headed by Greg Marecek and which operated KFNS and KFNS-FM, entered into a local marketing agreement to operate KRFT with intent to purchase for $1.6 million. KRFT formally returned to the air on May 13, 2002, as "The Sports Explosion", carrying the Fox Sports Radio lineup around the clock as a complement to KFNS's predominantly local lineup. All three stations were acquired by Big League Broadcasting—then the operators of WQXI in Atlanta—in May 2004 for a combined $11.5 million, $6.5 million of which was used to pay down debt. Following the sale, KRFT's Fox Sports Radio affiliation was transferred to KFNS and KFNS-FM, while KRFT took the Sporting News Radio affiliation, the lone holdover on the lineup being The Jim Rome Show.
In September 2004, Missouri Sports Radio and two other companies reached a $158,000 settlement with the federal government over charges that KRFT and other radio stations profited off illegal gambling activities conducted from 2000 to 2003.
Despite being owned by a company that specialized in sports radio, KRFT flipped to talk radio in March 2006 with a lineup consisting of both syndicated conservative and progressive hosts, a move characterized by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch as "an unusual radio experiment". Programs on KRFT included Imus in the Morning; The Al Franken Show; 2 Live Stews and The Dave Ramsey Show; and shows hosted by Clark Howard, Neal Boortz and Jim Cramer. KRFT switched formats back to sports radio on January 1, 2008, carrying the entire ESPN Radio lineup again as an all-syndicated compliment to KFNS and KFNS-FM; after WXOS acquired the affiliation rights to ESPN Radio, KRFT reverted to Sporting News Radio programming. During this period, KRFT also carried play-by-play broadcasts KFNS and KFNS-FM were unable to carry due to schedule conflicts, or had declined to run altogether.
Romanik era
Insane Broadcasting Company
In part due to the aftereffects of the Great Recession locally, Big League Broadcasting began selling off all their assets, having lost more than $9 million in the market over five years. Entertainment Media Trust —whose officer, director and trustee was identified as Dennis J. Watkins—acquired KRFT for $600,000 in a transaction filed on September 25, 2009. EMT had previously acquired WIL from Bonneville International in early 2008, then the third oldest-surviving radio station in Greater St. Louis, renaming it KZQZ. The purchase of KRFT was immediately followed with the purchase of WFFX from KSLG owner Simmons Media Group, both KRFT and WFFX were valued at over $1 million. EMT's ownership interests also included WQQW in Highland, Illinois, which was acquired in September 2006 from the Rev. Larry Rice's New Life Evangelistic Center and initially held the WXOZ calls.Under the name Insane Broadcasting Company, Entertainment Media Trust switched KRFT's format to classic country, branded "Kool Killer Kountry" and under the KQQZ call sign, while WFFX was renamed WQQX upon that deal's closure. Robert "Bob" S. Romanik, who identified himself in a 2010 newspaper interview as a "consultant" for Insane Broadcasting, claimed to have been run by his son Stephen Romanik, also hosted a talk show on KZQZ billed as the "Grim Reaper of Radio". This program initially aired on WXOZ starting on September 4, 2006, when Insane assumed control of that station, billed by Romanik as a "verbal Jerry Springer" where listeners could "be able to get things off of their chest". Romanik had also claimed that the stations were not bought to "knock sports off the air" but viewed them as a good business opportunity, while playing down any involvement in Grand Slam Sports. By November 2010, EMT received approval from the FCC to upgrade KQQZ's nighttime service from 22 watts to 650 watts; included in this was a city of license change for the station to Fairview Heights, Illinois.
Despite the initial claims that his son headed Insane Broadcasting, Romanik was effectively seen as the de facto head of the group and having taken a "very hands-on role" to station operations, and had been from the beginning, acting as WXOZ's general manager upon launch. The Rev. Larry Rice later expressed regret at the sale of WXOZ upon realizing the parties involved and at first tried to minister to Romanik, after being reassured that Romanik wanted to own WXOZ to play "some old-time songs", Rice shared with him a copy of I Walk the Line and stepped aside. Veteran broadcaster Kevin Slaten was hired by KQQZ in early March 2013 to host an afternoon-drive program, with plans to ultimately develop a full-time lineup of male-oriented talk programming on the station. When Slaten left KQQZ that June 27 to be part of a start-up venture time-brokered on WGNU, Romanik took to the air in Slaten's time slot the next day, repeatedly attacking him on-air for nearly 15 minutes and claiming "his moral compass is all screwed up"; Slaten responded by calling Romanik "a coward" and that KQQZ had "no future" for failing to acquire any additional air talent.