and was especially useful during periods of labor unrest, such as major strikes, when much of the corporate owned media was far less likely to analyze the situation from a pro-labor perspective... Launched in 1926, the station continued to function under the ownership of the CFL until 1978, with the Federation finding the need to make it a commercial operation in 1930. By the 1960s, the station had turned over almost all of its programming to a Top 40 music format. The CFL made the decision in 1978 that operation of the station was no longer profitable and sold it to the Mutual Broadcasting System, at the time a subsidiary of the infamously anti-Labor Amway Corporation. From the late 1970s until the early 1990s, Chicago lacked a consistent outlet for labor news. In the early 1990s, communication activists at Loyola University of Chicago and in the surrounding community, lead an effort to transform the university's radio station from a dance music format into a station that sought out community oriented programming. One of the first programs to develop from these efforts was Labor Express. Wayne Heimbach, Labor Beat TV, and the early years of Labor Express Radio The founding producer of Labor Express Radio, and its host for over 10 years, was Wayne Heimbach, an organizer with Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 73 at the time. Heimbach, much like his predecessors who founded WCFL, recognized the importance of developing forms of labor movement mass communication. Heimbach had already been active in supporting the work of the Committee for Labor Access, the organization responsible for producing the Labor Beat TV program, a weekly Public-access television show in Chicago that also covers issues related to the working class movement in Chicago and on the national scene. When WLUW expressed its interest in broadcasting locally produced, community-focused programming, Heimbach seized the opportunity to launch the first labor oriented radio news program in the city in nearly 20 years. WLUW currently broadcasts Labor Express once a week, in a one-hour time slot at 10 AM on Monday mornings. The early focus of Labor Express was local struggles of the labor movement in Chicago and the Midwestern United States. Some of the stories covered in the program's early years included renewed efforts at organizing service sector workers in Chicago by SEIU (Service Employees International Union), Heimbach's own union, and the Chicago Staley Workers Solidarity