| City of license | Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania |
|---|---|
| Broadcast area | Pittsburgh metropolitan area |
| Branding | SportsRadio 93.7 The Fan |
| Slogan | All Sports. All The Time. |
| Frequency |
93.7 MHz 93.7 HD-1: Sports talk93.7 HD-2: Currently silent 93.7 HD-3: KDKA simulcast |
| First air date | 1953 |
| Format | Sports radio |
| ERP | 41,000 watts |
| HAAT | 167 meters |
| Class | B |
| Facility ID | 20350 |
| Callsign meaning | taken from sister station KDKA |
| Former callsigns | WKJF-FM (1950s-?) WKOI (?-?) WJOI (?-1981) WBZZ (12/10/1981-07/07/2004) WRKZ (07/07/2004-04/02/2007) WTZN-FM (04/02/2007-11/27/2007) WBZW-FM (11/27/2007-02/15/2010) |
| Owner | CBS Radio |
| Sister stations | KDKA, KDKA-TV, WBZZ, WDSY-FM, WPCW |
| Webcast | Listen Live |
| Website | www.937thefan.com |
KDKA-FM (93.7 FM), branded as "SportsRadio 93.7 The Fan", is a radio station in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Owned by CBS Radio, the station operates at 93.7 MHz with an ERP of 41 kW. Its transmitter is located in Pittsburgh. The station currently programs a sports radio format. It is currently dark on its HD2 subchannel, while HD3 simulcasts its AM namesake, KDKA.
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The 93.7 frequency in Pittsburgh began its life as WKJF-FM in the 1950s, an independently-owned FM station. For a brief time, there was a co-owned UHF TV station, WKJF-TV (channel 53; now occupied by WPGH-TV), which operated in 1953-54.
During its early incarnations as WKJF, WKOI, and WJOI, the station programmed a beautiful music format.
Debuting on April 2, 1981, WBZZ (B94) was the city’s number one Top 40 music station, tailoring their programming to not only a younger audience, but also a Pittsburgh audience. The first song played after the format switch was "You May Be Right" by Billy Joel.
B94 featured local morning shows such as “Quinn and Banana" (featuring Jim Quinn and "Banana" Don Jefferson) in the 1980s and “John, Dave, Bubba and Shelly” (with some minor personality changes) in the 1990s through 2004.
In 2000, Clear Channel Communications unveiled a new CHR format, KISS-FM, on WKST-FM. The new station began to take a large chunk out of B94's audience. With more syndicated programming featuring famous national on air talent and focusing more on the younger audience, B94 for the first time, saw itself slipping into second place. Also not helping matters was sister station WZPT switching to a Hot AC format at the same time, which, while it played a mix of 80's and 90's music with current hits, otherwise had a similar format to B94.
Early in 2003, WBZZ tweaked its name by calling itself “93-7 BZZ”. This was done because the station did want any confusion of exactly where they were on the radio dial, especially considering that the only station in Pittsburgh actually on the 94 range (WWSW-FM) had an oldies format. It was also done to re-image their station to compete with its new rival, WKST. Later, in mid-2004, the station would tweak its name again, calling itself this time "B93-7".
In 2004, Clear Channel yanked Howard Stern from all of their owned stations that aired his show, including the local WXDX-FM. In response, WBZZ operations manager Keith Clark and other station officials decided to flip the station’s format after 23 years, and not only pick up Howard Stern (which they saw as a golden opportunity to improve their ratings) but unveil a new active rock format known as "93-7 K-Rock" to compete with Clear Channel’s other rock stations.
On June 30, 2004, at 10 AM, WBZZ’s on-air talent gathered to say goodbye to Pittsburgh, thanking them for their support throughout the years. B94 ended with "Move This" by Technotronic, while K-Rock's first song was "For Those About To Rock" by AC/DC. Listeners that had liked B94 but didn't like the new rock format were encouraged on-air to listen to sister station WZPT. The WBZZ call letters would be replaced by WRKZ on July 7, 2004. Ratings for the station improved initially after the switch, but began to decline before Howard Stern's departure for Sirius Satellite Radio.
To replace Stern, the station carried David Lee Roth's radio show as his replacement. However, due to low ratings, Roth was replaced by Opie and Anthony less than three months after his debut.
The afternoon drive show of Kidd Chris, from co-owned WYSP in Philadelphia, aired on 93.7 from August 28, 2006 until March 19, 2007.
On April 2, 2007, K-Rock became "93.7 The Zone," and changed call signs to WTZN-FM in the process. The station, although not carrying the "Free FM" name in its branding, was considered to be part of CBS's hot talk network by that name, the only station to affiliate with the network after the initial launch. Joining the lineup were Opie and Anthony, Pittsburgh native Dennis Miller, and former WDVE personality Scott Paulsen.[1] The station also carried programming from Sporting News Radio. Miller and Paulsen were displaced to KDKA when the format was abandoned.
On Monday, October 1, 2007, WTZN began stunting with Christmas music, in anticipation of a format flip scheduled for later that week.[2] The station made some fairly obvious hints as to the future of the station, advertising "Something's missing in 'Pitts-urgh'," prompting visitors to go to a message board at http://www.pitts-urgh.com/ where there is a message board asking "What do you miss the most about Pittsburgh?," among the choices being "B94 Radio."
B94 returned to Pittsburgh the following Friday at 5 pm, with its first song being Justin Timberlake's "SexyBack." This marked CBS Radio's first top 40 station launch of the late 2000s; it would later launch the format in Houston (KKHH), San Francisco (KMVQ-FM), New York City (WXRK), Los Angeles (KAMP-FM), and Detroit (WVMV).
The return of B94 was apparently part of a CBS Radio initiative of resurrecting radio stations that had been killed off for other formats, such as WCBS-FM in New York and KFRC-FM in San Francisco. However, unlike those stations, which carry classic hits formats, B94 played current hits.
On November 27, 2007, WTZN switched its call sign to WBZW-FM to reflect its new format. B94's former call letters, WBZZ, were in use by an Adult Contemporary radio station in Malta, New York called Buzz 105.7. That station is now known as WQSH, and CBS has indicated an intention to reacquire the call signs for use on one of its properties (which would later be at WZPT).
In the wake of WAMO-FM's departure from the Urban Contemporary format in September 2009 after it was sold to a Catholic-based organization, WBZW have managed to take advantage of the situation by adding current R&B/Hip-Hop tracks to pick up the displaced WAMO listeners, even at the expense of the more Rhythmic-heavy WKST, but at the same time stay within the Mainstream Top 40/CHR realm due to WKST's Rhythmic direction.
On January 19, 2010, it was announced that CBS Radio would drop B94 for sports talk, launching February 15, 2010 under the name "Sportsradio 93.7 The Fan".[3] Again, the change was part of an initiative by CBS to establish FM sports talk stations; often displacing heritage music stations in the process (WBZ-FM in Boston was another example of this). The station will focus on local sports programming while going head-to-head with WEAE and WBGG, which are owned by ESPN Radio and affiliated with Fox Sports Radio, respectively. Much like the previous abandonment of B94, the station's format was merged into WZPT ("Star 100.7"). Bubba and Melanie from the former B94 morning show have both moved to Star 100.7, with Bubba joining JR and Shelly on the morning show and Melanie Taylor taking the mid-day shift. Former WZPT mid-day jock Scott Alexander slides to afternoons, prompting the exit of former Star afternoon personality Jonny Hartwell. Kobe, B94's afternoon jock and Music Director, and Flick, B94's night jock, were both released. Mid-day guy Sean "Coop" Cooper was transferred to nights at WYCD in Detroit.[4]
The station also adopted the call sign KDKA-FM on February 15, 2010, to reflect the recent trend for CBS Radio all-sports stations in markets with a heritage CBS-owned station to have matching call signs, in this case KDKA-TV and the historic KDKA Radio.
As with both the new format and when it was WTZN-FM, the only other FM talk station in Pittsburgh is WPGB.
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