WQXQ

WQXQ-FM
City Central City, Kentucky
Broadcast area Owensboro, Kentucky
Evansville, Indiana
Hopkinsville, KY
Bowling Green
Branding Fox Sports Radio
Frequency 101.9 MHz
First air date December 18, 1956 (1956-12-18)
Format Sports radio
ERP 100,000 watts = 100 kW
HAAT 204 metres (669 ft)
Class C1
Facility ID 46945
Transmitter coordinates 37°35′3.00″N 88°59′29.00″W / 37.5841667°N 88.9913889°W / 37.5841667; -88.9913889
Former callsigns WNES-FM (1956-1981)
WKYA (1981-1993)
Affiliations Fox Sports Radio
Owner Radio Active Media, Inc.
(Starlight Broadcasting, Inc.)
Sister stations WKYA, WXMZ, WNES

WQXQ (101.9 FM) is a radio station broadcasting a Sports talk radio format. Licensed to Central City, Kentucky, USA, the station serves the Central City, and the Owensboro, Kentucky and Evansville, Indiana areas. The station is currently owned by Radio Active Media, Inc. WQXQ is considered a "Heritage Broadcast Station."

History

Call letters

The call letters WQXQ were previously assigned to an FM station in New York City in the 1940s. It was a sister station to WQXR (now WFME), operating on 96.3 MHz.[1]

Station history

As an FM simulcast

The station signed on the air as WNES-FM on December 18, 1956.[2] The station began as a simulcast of WNES-AM for the FM station's first 23 years and four months on the air. It began broadcasting beautiful music as a separate station on April 23, 1980.

First Hot AC attempt and Country format (1981-1993)

On December 1, 1981, the station switched to a Hot AC format and changed the call letters to WKYA. The radio station employed local radio talent during this period and experienced a great deal of success,[3] but head-to-head competition with "Hot AC" giant WSTO (96-STO) based at that time in Owensboro took its toll on the station. So after a slow down in listenership and sales, "KY-102" ceased to exist and it changed its format to Country Music in 1989-90. From that point on, it called itself "K-Country KY-102". This was successful for a period of time until another Owensboro station, in this case being WBKR, clamped down on the market by increasing their transmitter's effective radiated power.

New Hot AC era (1993-2013)

On February 23, 1993, due to WBKR dominating the ratings in terms of their country music format, WKYA discontinued their country format and changed the call letters to the current WQXQ.[4] The WKYA calls have been reassigned to an Oldies formatted station broadcasting at 105.5 MHz in Greenville, located not too far southwest of Central City.

A new tower was built in northern Ohio County near Pleasant Ridge, and the station returned to a more "Hot AC" style format featuring a local talent in the morning and then satellite powered broadcast for the rest of the day. The station also attempted to brand itself as an "Owensboro Station" because during the format flip-flops, their main "Hot AC" competitor (96 WSTO) moved from Owensboro to Evansville, Indiana. There were even attempts at moving the entire studios to a small office in Owensboro, but this never happened.

After being branded as "Q-101.9 FM" for a time during the mid and late-2000s, the branding changed to "Q-102" around 2011, and the format was changed to a CHR/Top 40 format, which mostly included new music. The station also broadcast the nationally-syndicated radio show, On Air with Ryan Seacrest on weekdays, and the American Top 40 in the weekends. However, this did not last long, because it brought back a previous problem due to WSTO's top 40 format.

Sports format (2013-present)

In October 2013, WQXQ switched to a sports radio format after becoming an affiliate of Fox Sports Radio. Hence, the station was rebranded as Fox Sports Radio WQXQ. The station's main competitors now include Drakesboro's WNTC (an FM repeater of WNSR of Nashville, Tennessee) and Owensboro's WLME, an ESPN Radio affiliate that is licensed in Lewisport.

The studios are located in Central City inside the same building they've been located in since their inception. They do, however, maintain sales offices in Owensboro and Central City, but all broadcasting originates from their one and only studio in Central City. The studios are located south of downtown Central City in the Leader-News Weekly Newspaper office along Everly Brothers Boulevard. The old broadcast tower now acts as the "STL Broadcast Tower" which relays the signal to the main tower in Ohio County.

Coverage area

WQXQ is a full 100,000 watt station. It can be heard about 80 miles away in every direction from the tower site in northern Ohio County. The coverage area includes much of the Pennyrile region of western and west-central Kentucky, and much of southern Indiana. The signal reaches several areas within the signal range, including all three major cities in the Evansville Tri-state area, and can reach as far east as the Elizabethtown/Fort Knox and the Cave City and Mammoth Cave National Park areas, and some far western suburbs of Louisville. It can also reach as far south as Bowling Green, Springfield, Tennessee and the northern suburbs of Clarksville, Tennessee, as far north as an area halfway between Evansville and Bloomington, Indiana, and as far west as Gallatin and Hardin Counties in Illinois and Crittenden County, Kentucky.[5] WQXQ has the second-largest signal coverage area in the Owensboro area next to WBKR, whose signal can also reach the described the aforementioned areas as WBKR also broadcasts at 100,000 watts.

References

  1. ↑ "WQXQ on Fulltime". (PDF). Broadcasting. July 21, 1947. Retrieved October 4, 2014.
  2. ↑ 1965 Broadcasting Yearbook, page B-63
  3. ↑ 1984 Broadcasting Yearbook, page B-102
  4. ↑ "WQXQ Call Sign History". United States Federal Communications Commission, audio division.
  5. ↑ http://radio-locator.com/cgi-bin/patg?id=WQXQ-FM
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