9&10 news (a position he held for many years), and finally run for a state legislative seat in the 1990s before retiring. In 1977 former WCCW afternoon host Lin McNett ("Michael O'Shea") replaced McRae and Meyer as WTCM's program director and morning personality. Many out of town talents were brought to the market in this short (2-3 year) period for the first time in the stations history as it attempted a metamorphasis from "old school" to "modern" in the face of the growing potential Fm band competition. Other air staff during this period included Jon McRae, and "Downtown" Ed Brown from WTAC in Flint, Michigan (Brown is now with "All Access", a national broadcasting trade publication as its contemporary radio editor); Delbert "Tim" Nixon (now with MacDonald-Garber Broadcasting in Petoskey); Don Schuster (who came from Detroit free-form radio legends WWWW/W-4 and WABX and is now back there 40 years later in sales capacities); local talent Marty Spaulding (later with WRKR in Kalamazoo for 10 year hosting an internationally recognized blues format "netcast" in the early days of internet broadcasting); Jon "Patrick" Rekeweg from Am radio in Fort Wayne; Bob Greenwood (from the legendary free-form rock station WHNN in Bay City); Dave "Leighton" Elliott; and Alan "White" Vasquez, a former host of the avant-garde "Pen Ultimate" late night alternative rock show on competitor WCCW) who went on to numerous roles in broadcast programming where he still resides in Colorado. Rekeweg is now the longest serving member of the Midwest air/management staff. The contemporary format was initially successful, but the 1977 format change of WJML, and the 1980 entry of WKHQ, both from north of Traverse City but with strong regional signals into the market caused the predictable result, and listeners gravitated over a period of a couple years to the clear, static-free stereo FM contemporary format signals. It was the fading days of AM radio as a competitor just about everywhere. WTCM became simulcast to the FM signal not long after that. WTCM-FM became country in the early 1970s, at the urging of WTCM salesman Leon Purchase, a local country musician, who was convinced that a country format would work in rural northern Michigan. Purchase convinced Biederman of this the old fashioned way, by making WTCM-FM - even though automated other than the morning simulcast period - a highly salable and accepted product in the market. Today that opinion is a