Newsweb Radio

Fred Eychaner’s Newsweb Radio is voluntarily giving back the license of one of its eight Chicago area radio stations to the Federal Communications Commission.

WCFJ AM 1470, a time-brokered ethnic and foreign-language station licensed to south suburban Chicago Heights, ceased broadcasting Saturday, according to Charley Gross, president of Newsweb Radio.

“We are turning in the FCC license,” Gross said. “The station was not profitable.”

The 1,000-watt daytime station’s audience was too small to register in Nielsen Audio ratings. Owned by Newsweb Radio since 1998, the station first went on the air in 1963 as WMPP (“Working [for] More People's Progress”) under Seaway Broadcasting Co. In 1989 Liberty Temple Full Gospel Church acquired the station and changed its call letters to WCFJ (“Winning Chicagoland for Jesus”).

Newsweb Radio continues to operate seven other stations, including progressive talk WCPT AM 820 and WCPT FM 92.5. Others, airing various time-brokered formats, are WNDZ AM 750, WAIT AM 850, WSBC AM 1240, WCPY FM 92.7 and WCPQ FM 99.9.

“The rest of our stations are good,” Gross said.

Eychaner, the Chicago media magnate and one of the country’s most generous contributors to liberal candidates and causes, founded Newsweb Corp. in 1971. In 2002 he sold WPWR-Channel 50 to Rupert Murdoch's Fox Television for $425 million.