WIL (AM)

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WIL AM is a radio station broadcasting at 1430 kHz on the AM band in St. Louis, Missouri. It is a country music format station owned by Bonneville International. WIL started broadcasting in 1922, and has had various formats during its tenure. From 1989 until 2005, the station was known as WRTH.

WIL was the first station in St. Louis to air a popular music format beginning in the 1950s, and was an early career stop in the late 1950s and early 1960s for personalities who later achieved success in New York City radio including WABC's Dan Ingram and Ron Lundy. It eventually succumbed to competition from Storz Broadcasting's KXOK AM, moving through various formats in the 1960s, before finally landing at country music, where it became the top country music outlet in town, featuring personalities such as Davey Lee.

In the mid-1970s, facing competition from startup country station WGNU-FM in Granite City, Illinois at 106.5; WIL began to simulcast with their sister station at 92.3 FM. By the early 1980s, WIL-FM was affirmed as the top country-music station in town, and 1430 AM was split off from their FM sister station to start a classic country format, which it kept until 1989 when the station switched to an adult standards format with the call letters WRTH, which were on the air with the same format for many years at 590 AM in Wood River, Illinois (now KFNS AM).

1430 AM went through the 1990s as WRTH, and into the 2000s. Facing the aging demographics of the nostalgia format, the station moved to a short-lived 50s/60s oldies station dubbed "Real Oldies 1430". Following a yearlong run with Oldies, the station briefly returned to its adult standards format in 2004, only to come full-circle, and return to classic country and its original callsign in 2005.

In June 1970, Increase Records released the album Cruisin' 1958, featuring a recording of the Jack Carney show on WIL.

[edit] Facilities

The station normally operates a directional array both day and night. It operates a five-kilowatt signal in the maximum direction at all times, phased among two towers in the daytime, and differently among four at night. The antenna site is located between Dupo and Cahokia in Illinois, which is why it has a W callsign (being east of the Mississippi River) rather than a K (from its city of license, St. Louis, being on the west side).

In 2006, very severe thunderstorms on July 20th knocked down one radio tower of WIL, and two more at KTRS AM 550 (which transmits from a different location). Both need the extra towers, which are mast radiators, to create the proper nulls to prevent RF interference to other stations. Under special temporary authority, they are operating nondirectional with reduced power until new towers can be erected. [1] The same storms left hondreds of thousands without electricity, and knocked KSLG AM 1380 off the air as well.