11/15/2024
Dennis Rumsey, general manager of WLKM - WRCI and the Voice of Three Rivers, shared with us about his life and work.
His career began as a 12-year-old, broadcasting stories from the newspaper from his room upstairs to whomever happened to be downstairs at his home.
Self-taught as a broadcaster, he learned the local ropes from Three Rivers icon Bruce Snook, whom he replaced in a radio slot on weekends.
His mother took him to Detroit to get his FCC license on his 16th birthday in 1969; the next day, he went to get his driver’s license.
At that time, the station was housed at the Riviera Theatre; DJs spun records for AM 1516. They later moved to a site at North Main Street, and in 1974 to its current tower site on Constantine Road. 95.9 FM went on air in 1975, 97.1 FM (country station) in 2008, and within the past few years, they added a transmitter in Sturgis. Rumsey is currently assisted by three staff members.
The WLKM weather wire, originally started in 1962, continues to this day at (269) 279-5221; they record weather into it three times a day, with an average of 300-350 calls coming in (double that in anticipation of severe weather). They still do announcements of lost pets, though they no longer announce Three Rivers Hospital admissions, discharges, and births.
Their greatest challenge as a commercial business is revenue, but his goal with advertising is to help local businesses – if they do well, the radio also does well. Rights fees for artists take up a large amount of the budget.
A Three Rivers native who attended Glen Oaks Community College, Rumsey is married to Joy, an RN at Three Rivers Health. Their daughter, Dr. Alyssa Erskine, works at the Three Rivers Health Center for Family Medicine. The family has Morgan horses; Joy and Alyssa show them and Dennis announces the shows. Most recently he announced the Morgan Horse World Championship, where Alyssa won world champion and Joy won reserve world champion.
