Power 92.3 Jamz is off the air

Hopper said he was told there was a dispute between WSRV and Media One owner Larry Edwards and the station was taken off the HD channel. This required Hopper on Monday night to take Power 92.3 Jamz off his 92.3 signal as well.

He said Edwards promised him on Tuesday that the issue will be resolved but he is awaiting an official letter from WSRV confirming that everything is copacetic before turning the signal back on. (Donna Hall, vice president of radio and news operations for Cox Media Group, which owns WRSV, declined to comment. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is also part of CMG.)

Hopper, who lives in Cartersville, said during the times he’s been in Atlanta and sampled 92.3, he noticed there were not many ads on the station and wondered how Edwards was able to keep the lights on.

Two numbers I had for Edwards, who runs Power, were no longer working today. Hopper declined to give me a direct contact for Edwards, who told him not to talk to me because I had been writing “negative” stories about him.

UPDATE: At 1:25 p.m., Edwards called me directly and said the issue will be resolved by the end of the week but declined to provide any more details.

UPDATE: On Saturday, the station was indeed back on the FM dial, the dispute apparently resolved.

Hopper had previously leased the 92.3 signal to iHeart to run it's 96.7/The Beat station but he decided to drop iHeart  after the company filed for bankruptcy protection in March. Hopper said he was concerned about its future and was unhappy that Justin Schaflander, the regional vice president, had not informed him of that news. 
iHeart was annoyed when Power 92.3 Jamz came on board for two reasons: it had been using the 92.3 signal for hip hop and it also has an existing pop station called Power 96.1. For two stations in a market to use the same moniker is basically considered a no no.

The Atlanta market has no shortage of hip-hop/R&B stations. V-103, Hot 107.9, Streetz 94.5, OG 97.9 and 96.7/The Beat skew more hip hop. And there are three others that fall more in the R&B world: Mix 87.7, Kiss 104.1 and Majic 107.5/97.5.

Power remains online in streaming form.

Edwards was formerly a registered agent for a company called Jamz 101 HD 2 Radio Station, which was dissolved in August, 2018 That meant he was the go-to person for the company to receive tax documentation.

The connection between that station and the current one is readily apparent on this particular Facebook page where the title name was not changed after the station shifted from 101.5 to 92.3. 

Enoch Kirkwood on his Facebook page prominently features Power 92.3 Jamz in his profile photos and identifies himself as CEO and president of Media One Broadcasting Inc., which may be a different company but not identified on the Georgia list of corporations. And just to add to the confusion, on his Twitter page, he identifies himself as president of operations for something called National Radio Syndication Networks. (That company is not registered with the Georgia Secretary of State office.) He does not reveal his face in his social media.

A company with a similar name called Media One Group Broadcasting Corp. is identified by the Secretary of State's office as dissolved in 2017.

Kirkwood and Edwards were affiliated with a company called Comedy One Television, which was registered with the Secretary of State in 2013 but dissolved in August, 2017. The registered agent was Media One Group Radio Stations. Kirkwood was identified as CEO and Edwards CFO with Media One Group Broadcasting as the secretary.

Edwards is also registered agent of something called Sky Sports out of Birmingham, which is still active.

The address Edwards uses for Sky Sports is a virtual office address at 3355 Lenox Road.