Ron Frisch of WQMS speaking to members of the Clarke County Chamber of Commerce on Feb. 18, 2011. Photo © 2011 by Terry Lynch

Los Angeles entrepreneur and business man, Ron Frisch, spoke to members of the Clarke County Chamber of Commerce and the media on Friday, Feb. 18, 2011, and promised them that WQMS would be coming to Quitman in the near future. Mr. Frisch told those present that WQMS would be an AM station and that although he did not wish to say what type of programming would be aired, results of the WQMS on-line survey powered by Micropoll were very good and would be taken into consideration. If you missed your chance to take the survey you can email WQMS to express your comments.

Mr. Frisch was very enthusiastic about getting WQMS up and running as soon as all the work could be done to convert the old station from analog and tape to the new high-tech digital standard being used by today's radio stations. He said that the new digital format would permit automation of broadcasting and streaming of feeds to the Internet. This means that virtually anyone in the world will be able to listen to WQMS via the Internet using home or desktop systems or other mobile devices.

Mr. Frisch was originally scheduled to address the Clarke County Chamber of Commerce earlier in the month, but his flight was cancelled due to the extremely bad weather that impacted the nation and cancelled many flights on Feb. 4th. I met him in the parking lot outside the Train Depot, introducing myself, asking if he was Ron. The well dressed gentleman greeted me and we began to chat about the prospects of bringing a radio station to Quitman and Clarke County.

Soon other C of C members arrived and after fiddling with the stuck door lock, finally managed to open the door and let the few of us who came learn about WQMS into the building. We all sat down around the conference table as Mr. Frisch began to answer questions about the proposed radio station which is located just north of Quitman on off of North-Jackson Ave. on CR 140 (See map below).

Learning that there were old tapes, perhaps of church services or other material stored at the old radio studio building, I suggested these might be donated to the Clarke County Historical Society. It would be such a waste if precious sermons were lost, a fact I appreciate given my grandfather was a Methodist minister and only a few of his very early sermons were written down and survived the test of time which has its was of wiping away the old order of things to bring in the new ... that if we aren't careful to appreciate what our parents and grandparents left behind for us, it might be forever lost. So I hope Mr. Frisch finds a new home for some of the items found at the old radio station and they don't end up in a dumpster.

Mr. Frisch explained that the new station would be broadcasting at 1,000 watts. That plus the fact the transmissions will be in digital will mean the market place for advertisers should easily include all of Clarke County. If you add into the equation the fact that the broadcasts will be digital and can be streamed onto the Internet, then it may open the entire WWW to advertisers which manufacture or market products that may have appeal far beyond the Piney Woods horizon.

Mr. Frisch did not want discuss too may details about the radio station given he had yet to meet with an engineer to determine how long it would take to get the station up and running. He did say, however, that once it was ready to go LIVE, and not be in the dark any more, that the public would be invited to come view the new facilities. I also learned that the Frisch's own another radio station in the Syracuse-Utica/Rome, NY area, which was recently purchased from Bible Broadcasting Network as reported by CYNRadio.com. According to their Feb 17, 2011 report:

"An unexpected sale of a non-commercial station appeared in some of the national trades this week. Bible Broadcasting Network is selling WYFY/Rome (1450AM) to Tune In Broadcasting. The price tag: $90,000 total for the station itself and for the land at the corner of Muck Road and South Jay Street, where transmitter building sits.

According to Radio & Television Business Report, the buyer is Tune In Broadcasting, who is “contractually obligated to come up with a new set of calls,” as Bible Broadcasting Network intends to retain and re-assign WYFY elsewhere.

The website says Tune In Broadcasting, owned by Coreen Frisch, has put down $10,000 for the station, with another $10,000 due at closing. That $20,000 is just for the station itself — the remaining $70,000, for the land, is being handled in a separate deal.

Both RBR and today’s edition of Taylor on Radio-Info say that Tune In Broadcasting already owns one other station, WQMS in Quitman, MS. The FCC’s AM Query site says WQMS is owned by Matadors, LLC, which is owned by Coreen and Ron Frisch of Santa Clarita, California. Both sites say that Tune In Broadcasting intends to make 1450 in Rome a commercial station, but no other details have been released about the format as of yet."

I asked Mr. Frisch if there would be opportunity for nonprofit organizations or churches to do broadcasting. He said that certainly the station would run PSAs, but that any churches which wanted to do actual broadcasting of services would have to pay for this or have a sponsor foot the bill. He seemed to insinuate that this would not be possible as if you let one church have free time you would have to let every church have free time which would not be possible as there are only 24 hours in a day, and with a church on every corner in the Bible Belt, WQMS would soon turn into WGOD. However, after thinking about this issue I'm not sure that it is true that religious programming could not be made available in a platform that would be fair and equitable to all churches, given a programming slot could be setup to be paid for by business sponsors to permit any church or minister to present programming, such that then the new station could better serve the entire community.

Mr. Frisch seemed to be disappointed that Mayor Eddie Fulton was not able to attend the meeting and expressed that he wanted to meet the mayor. I told him his office is always open and that Eddie was a fantastic job for the City, and he should certainly meet Eddie and might try just making a cold call. Hopefully Mr. Frisch will meet Mr. Fulton as I know Eddie will impress upon Mr. Frisch how much a radio station is needed for Quitman and Clarke County.

I will be waiting eagerly, as will everyone else, to hear what sort of programming Mr. Frisch plans for WQMS. I got the impression after he cut AT&T and put in a good word about Verison that advertising isn't going to be limited to local companies. Given Mr. Frisch also operates another radio station in New York where Verison is very popular, I have a feeling that AT&T is going to be having more competition from Verison in Clarke County in the future. But Mr. Frisch did not say anything of the sort, he merely hinted that there was another network that may be affiliated with WQMS. So I reckon that's just a surprise we will all have to wait for until the station goes LIVE and we can unwrap our present.

WQMS AM radio station, Quitman, MS. Center antenna tower has a small satellite dish at the base. WQMS studio is located in a small concrete block building (Inset: top right) which has a large satellite dish behind the building (Inset: bottom left). The property is rented and also serves as a transponder for satellite feed from another FM station which broadcasts religious programming. PHOTOS © 2011 by Terry Lynch.

In parting the C of C building I mentioned to Mr. Frisch how important it was to provide some time for local religious broadcasting given the fact young people are so often losing there way. He seemed surprised I should bring this back up asking, "How many murders are there here?" Being from LA I could see where he was going and replied, "Not as many as in LA, that's for sure," but just last week there was a county wide drug raid which made many arrests and ever week in the Clarke County Tribune crimes are reports, so certainly though Quitman and Clarke County are NOT Los Angeles, thank God, we do have our fair share of crime. Hence more of our young people need to be getting a good moral education, which perhaps a radio station might contribute toward.

I would hope by my speaking out on this issue Mr. Frisch will give it some consideration in the future. I'm not asking that the call letters be changed from WQMS to WGOD, but it would be nice if at least on Sunday morning there might be the opportunity for religious broadcasting on a format that is open to all religions. In that way is a local Baptists or Methodist minister might want to broadcast a sermon this could be done, or if a preacher, rabbi or other man or woman of God wanted to present a broadcast, this might be done, perhaps allowing slots on Sunday morning to be filled on a rotating bases by those churches or ministers who present recorded sermons.

While speaking with Mr Frisch I also mentioned that it might be nice to have something other than just country music to listen to all the time on the radio station, given this area seems to be dominated by country stations. It will indeed be interesting to learn what the results are of the WQMS survey. Of course whatever those result are they are NOT scientific. What I'd really like to see is results of a survey made by a professional company that really researches the issue. Of course in a County which has only a population of 16,732 people (as of 2010 US Census report), of which only a small percentage every listen to AM radio, there might not be the market or profit potential to justify a more expensive survey.

What do you think? I'd love to know what you think about WQMS coming to our little town. Send your opinions to What do you thing?. Hey, maybe one of these days I can get a spot on WQMS to have my own "What Do You Think?" talk show where all my family, friends and fans can call in and give me a piece of their mind. Why I think that would be a really popular program that WQMS might even franchise nation-wide. Who knows, I might be able to give Howard Stern or Rush Limbaugh a run for their money, though I'm not sure how I'd feel being labeled a shock jock.

Historical Review For those not familiar with WQMS, and how Ron Frisch came into possession of the radio station here is a little background: Apparently the station was in Chapter 11, Title 11 bankruptcy. According to Radio & Television Business Report Ron and Coreen Frisch purchased the station on 7/12/2010 as per the report below: $29K WQMS-AM Quitman MS from Acme Broadcasting South Inc. (Ira Littman) to Matadors LLC (Ron Frisch, Coreen Frisch). $5K earnest money, $24K note assumption. [FCC file date 7/12/10] New Station Proposal I visited WQMS on Saturday afternoon, the day after speaking with Mr. Frische at the C of C meeting. He was at the station meeting with an engineer and gave me a very quick walk-through of the facilities, remarking about how much of the equipment had been stripped and indicating it may take five to six months or longer to get the old station up and running. When I remarked that the old concrete block building might need painting and a WQMS sign put up, Ron said he didn't even own the building, and was just renting. I walked around the outside of the building to get some photos of the station. I've been in my fair share of radio and television studios in larger towns, so I was not really very impressed. My recommendations would be to relocate the WQMS studio to a building in downtown Quitman where it would be in public view and paint a big logo on the side of the building. Then invest any money in setting up a new digital studio in that downtown location. Feed from a downtown studio could be transmitted back to the tower or just beamed up to a satellite using a small dish. The advantage of relocating the studio downtown would be that it would be visible to the public, be someplace people would like to visit for live interviews, be in a more secure area, plus have a greater appeal for local advertisers. At least this is my opinion given the condition of the old station house and the fact that with computer, digital and satellite technology it is relatively easy to set up a new facility. In this digital age even remote radio and television units can travel to areas and set up immediately to broadcast live practically from anywhere. Why there are even a growing number of amateurs setting up Internet radio stations out of their homes. So why waist money trying to revamp the old analog station house when a studio could be setup downtown and just transmit to the antenna tower or beam digital content up to a satellite -- especially given Mr. Frische doesn't even own the building where the old studio is located and would have to invest a lot of money fixing it up. So why not relocate the studio, as that old adage is still true that in business, even the radio business, "location, location, location," is everything! The current location may have contributed to the failure of the previous radio station, so rather that repeat that same mistake, relocate and establish a studio in downtown Quitman. Of course I don't know what type of deal is involved in taking over the old station, but I just think after eyeballing it, that a better and more economical solution might be the one I've proposed here.

According to Ron Frische it may take many months before Quitman and Clarke County get their own AM station; given the above report, it may be July or August 2011 or even later before WQMS starts broadcasting. But that does not mean you have to wait to be able to listen to your favorite station. If you are like me and sit at your desk hacking away at the keyboard day in and day out, you may listen to your favorite radio stations already via the Internet.

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