WQZS

WQZS is an oldies and classic rock station that broadcasts from Meyersdale, Pennsylvania. WQZS also airs many oldtime radio shows. The station is 100 percent owned by Roger Wahl, a Larimer Township Supervisor, doing business as Target Broadcasting, Inc.

The station covers Somerset County and the surrounding area, as well as nearby Cumberland, Frostburg, and Oakland, Maryland; the station identification states that it can be heard in sixteen counties.

WQZS bears the distinction of being one of the few small-market stations in southwestern Pennsylvania with a live, local, real-time airstaff. WQZS is also the sole standalone FM radio station in Somerset County.

Roger Wahl serves as the station's general manager and news director. Helen Wahl serves as station program director. Their children, Rachel and Brian, also work at the station.

History

The groundwork for WQZS was actually laid in August 1988, when the construction permit to build it was first granted. The WQZS call letters were issued two years later. However, WQZS wouldn't go on the air for the first time until the fall of 1992. A series of interviews for on-air and sales staff was held at the Holiday Inn at Somerset in the summer of 1991, drawing hundreds of applicants thanks to an intensive advertising campaign and a sudden glut of on-air talent displaced by new FCC ownership regulations, which had station owners pairing up FMs in the same market. At this time, it was speculated that WQZS would go on the air with a soft adult contemporary format in response to research conducted in the Somerset County area.