One transmitter that Eastwind Engineering maintains is located at the WATZ radio station. WATZ was founded in 1946, and was the first commercial broadcast station in northern Michigan.
WATZ has its origin to the mid 1940's when the Midwestern Broadcasting Company decided to locate a broadcast facility in Alpena. Company founders along with partners developed WATZ INC. which remains a part of the company to this day.
As part of the process, the company started an aggressive construction effort of broadcast properties in what was to become known as "The Paul Bunyan Network" in Northern Michigan. Early broadcast holdings and startups by the company
included its flagship station WTCM in Traverse City, WATC in Gaylord, WATT in Cadillac, among others. The company then moved from Radio to television when WPBN Channel 7 in Traverse City, and later WTOM channel 4 in Cheboygan were established.
A majority of those properties have since been sold off, but do remain on the air. In the early days, WATZ radio (1450 KHz - 250 watts) carried a variety of programs from various network sources. Those included corporate, to other national
network sources or recorded programs. But a good share of programs originated from Alpena... either on location or in studio. As well, a lot of WATZ announcers were local natives, and still are. As business grew, so did the broadcast facility
when a studio expansion occurred on the old "Potter Hill / Radio Hill" site. In 1967, the stations FM transmitter was added to the Alpena airwaves. Originally, it was a 3,000 watt signal at 93.5 MHz which easily covered Alpena County.
In the late 1980's, the FM frequency was changed to 99.3, the power increased and studios moved to downtown Alpena.