The Loop (sort of) Lives On

From this morning's Tom Taylor NOW column...

Sure enough, Cumulus preserves the “WLUP” calls with a move to one of its Twin Cities FMs, as Friday’s Rumor Mill item suggested. So the “Loop”-identified calls won’t be going to Chicago (at least now), but WRXP Cambridge, Minnesota/105.3. It’s part of the classic hip-hop “Vibe” trimulcast, and Northpine, writing about the WLUP move, says “another Vibe 105 station, WWWM-FM Eden Prairie/105.7, has hosted a callsign parked from the Toledo market since 2016.” The Loop is not entirely MIA for Chicago listeners – Cumulus runs it on the HD2 channel of its LMA’s alternative WKQX/101.1. Cumulus got the intellectual property of the Loop, plus rights to the call letters, out of its pending $18 million purchase of WKQX from Merlin Media.

Seems like a weird move to me. Those heritage call letters belong in Chicago.