WZKO

On August 14, 1962, William H. Martin received the construction permit to establish a new radio station in Fort Myers, with the call letters WXYC. Martin sold the construction permit prior to going on air to Lee Broadcasting,[1] which changed the call letters to WCAI before signing on August 22, 1964.[2] The new daytime-only outlet broadcast middle-of-the-road music.[2] Operations were threatened in 1967 when a city controlled burn operation went out of control and blew toward the station; WCAI remained on the air, but its tower, which had just been painted red that day, was colored black with ash.[3]

WCAI remained mostly unchanged through the 1970s aside from a format flip to country, though it gave its listeners a scare when a 1977 promotion announcing "the end of the station" for a weekend of classic country prompted so many phone calls that a telephone exchange was blown out.[4] The next year, a disc jockey resigned after being implicated in a company that sold memberships in nonexistent department stores.[5] There were several transfers of ownership in 1980 and 1981, resulting in the station being sold to Ercona South for $600,000.[6] The principals of Lee Broadcasting had sold WCAI in order to pursue a new FM license on Estero Island,[7] which they won and launched in 1983 as WQEZ.[8] By 1984, WCAI was a talk station.[9]

In 1985, Charlie Frank reached an agreement to sell WCAI to Horizon Communications, which owned WQSA of Sarasota, for $700,000, with Horizon announcing plans to retain WCAI's talk programming.[10] However, ratings surveys showed it dead last in the Fort Myers market of 12 stations,[11] and in September, employee paychecks started bouncing as payment complications emerged in the sale to Horizon.[12] The wheels came off in November, two weeks after former owners Truman Morris and Helen Pierce foreclosed on Horizon,[13] when WCAI went silent while it searched for another new owner.[14]

Nine days after receiving authority to cease broadcasting from the Federal Communications Commission, WCAI filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy liquidation.[15] One prospective bidder was Caloosa Television, which owned WEVU-TV in Naples.[15] The only bid for WCAI, at $51,000, ultimately came from Roger Coleman, owner of a station in Galesburg, Illinois, after Caloosa withdrew its bid.[16] However, Coleman backed out and withdrew his application with the FCC to buy WCAI in April.[17] Other parties that showed interest in WCAI included a local pastor, Eddie Grimsley, who wanted to broadcast religious programming.[18] After the license was transferred to WCAI's former creditors, Asti Broadcasting Corporation of Clearwater acquired WCAI for $400,000 late in the year.[13]

To get their own identity in the market, Asti changed the call letters to WWWQ.[13] The station reemerged on March 15, 1987, as "3WQ" with an urban contemporary format—the only one in southwest Florida—primarily syndicated from the Satellite Music Network.[19] Only a year later, however, 1350 AM returned to talk, this time as WHYS, because it struggled to overcome its image as a "black" radio station with white listeners and advertisers.[20]

In 1989, Asti sold WHYS to Manna Christian Missions, which had brokered out 34 hours a week on the station for Spanish-language programming, for $450,000. Manna changed WHYS to WCRM "Radio Consolación",[21] the first Spanish-language radio station in Lee County.[22] Yet again, however, the minority-oriented format proved problematic for potential advertisers, prompting Manna to flip WCRM to contemporary Christian in July 1990.[23] (One of the hosts on the new station was Eddie Grimsley, the same pastor that had attempted to buy it out of bankruptcy four years prior.[23]) Less than two years later, WCRM flipped back to a Spanish-language format as "Radio Manantial".[24]

WCRM remained a Spanish-language Christian station, with some brokered programming and gospel music on Sundays, under Manna's ownership; it gained national recognition when it was named among the top 5 Spanish Christian radio stations in the United States in 1996.[25] It suffered through a 1997 burglary in which $9,000 worth of equipment was taken or destroyed,[26] as well as a 2000 lightning strike that took out its transmitter site.[27]

In 2008, Manna sold WCRM to Vida Radio Ministries, a subsidiary of Christ Center International, for $950,000. Three years later, however, Manna bought back the land on which WCRM's studios and transmitter are located from Christ Center for $50,000 in a foreclosure sale;[28] in early 2012, it won back the license in a settlement of Manna's claims against CCI.[29]

While Manna took back the WCRM license, it decided to outsource the station's operations under a local marketing agreement. In late July 2012, Everglades City Broadcasting, owners of WBGY (88.1 FM) on Marco Island, began operating WCRM and flipped it to Fox Sports Radio.[30]

In December 2015, Manna sold WCRM to Genesis Multimedia for $450,000.[31] Genesis paired the station with a translator it bought in Melbourne and moved to Fort Myers[32] as W298CB (107.5 FM), and relaunched WCRM as WZKO "107.5 Jamz".[33]