WXXC is a 50,000 watt Class Bradio station licensed to Marion, Indiana and serving the Muncie-Marion Arbitron market broadcasting on 106.9 MHz. Studios and offices are located at 820 S. Pennsylvania St. in Marion, IN. The station features an Adult Contemporary format mainly consisting of hits from the 1990s to present. The station is currently owned by Hoosier AM/FM.
History
The station signed on in 1948 as WMRI and featured a beautiful music format. In the 1990s, WMRI was owned by Bomar Broadcasting, which made WMRI the flagship station of their mini-network of easy listening stations throughout Indiana. Stations in this network included WLEZ Terre Haute, WEZV in Lafayette, and WYEZ in South Bend. WYEZ was the first network station sold and went to LeSEA Broadcasting. WEZV was sold in 1998 to Artistic Media Partners, and WLEZ was sold to Crossroads Communications in the early 2000s. Bomar sold WMRI shortly thereafter to Mid-America Radio, owners of crosstown country outlet WCJC and oldies WBAT,.
Programming
WMRI's programming mainly consisted of beautiful music for much of its existence. However the format was aging and so were its faithful listeners. WMRI held on to the B/EZ format for much longer than a majority of stations nationwide as many dropped or gradually moved away from the format by the mid to late 1980s. In the fall of 1998, WMRI ended its beautiful music run and flipped to adult contemporary as "Lite Rock 106.9". Their lone existing network station in Terre Haute also flipped to AC as "Lite Rock 102.7". The format consisted of Marion-based deejays by day and satellite programming from Westwood One's Bright AC format at night. Since Bright AC was a Hot AC format and WMRI itself featured a much softer blend of music by day, the station switched affiliations to Jones Radio Networks 'AC' format to create format uniformity all day. In the early 2000s, WLEZ was sold to a Terre Haute-based company and ended Bomar's radio network stint. The programming structure on WMRI, however, continued. The only exception was for on-air personalities who now had the freedom totalk about station promotions and other Marion-based mentions. The mix of local and satellite content through Jones continued until 2006 when the format was dropped in favor of classic hits. The WMRI calls were moved to their AM sister station, which took on an adult standards format, as 106.9 became WXXC. On November 18, 2013 the station dropped the branding "106.9 WXXC" and the Classic Hits format and became "Star 106.9" and now features an Adult Contemporary format, playing hits from the 1990s to now "The 90s to Now." The station features a line-up of Bob and Sheri in the mornings, Vanessa Miller in the afternoons, Taylor Scott in the evenings, and John Tesh from 7PM to Midnight.
