In 1984, the FCC issued a post-sunset license to the station for 9.7 watts and an omini-directional pattern. The radiation pattern was so efficient with 9.7 watts, that the signal from the 5/8-wavelength radiator could be heard as far away as Michigan City, Indiana and Merrillville, Indiana at night. The station's format remained nearly unchanged for nearly 30 years until music license fees and finances forced the station to adopt a more talk-oriented format by the mid-1990s with limited music play. In the 1970s, WGN engineers studied the studio design at WNWI inside the Valpo Tech main hall to see how the audio and electrical engineers at the school built the studios with super-large plate-glass windows while maintaining excellent acoustics in the studios at that time. The studio design at WNWI was the inspiration for the large plate-glass window studios seen today for WGN radio on Michigan Avenue in Chicago. WBBM-TV even used the over-engineered tower structure at WNWI as a TV antenna relay for a brief period in the 1960s to improve TV service to Northwest Indiana until the Sears Tower was built and the CBS affiliate could move its transmitter and antenna to the top of the new building. After that, the antenna relay was disassembled and all that remained of the support structure for the antenna were cross-arms, which can be seen on the original tower structure in Valparaiso, Indiana to this day. The station was sold in 1995 to Birach Broadcasting, who eventually moved the tower and transmitter location to Oak Lawn, Illinois and applied to the FCC for a dramatic power increase. The husband-wife Hershman family team who operated the station died a short time later from medical conditions that they had been battling for years. References External links Birach Broadcasting Corporation Serbian Radio Chicago website NWI Oak Lawn, Illinois Polish-American culture in Illinois Polish-language radio stations in the United States Birach Broadcasting Corporation stations Radio stations established in 1965 1965 establishments in Indiana