| City of license | Brentwood, Tennessee |
|---|---|
| Broadcast area | Nashville, Tennessee |
| Branding | SportsRadio 560 |
| Slogan | Nashville's Local Sports Leader |
| Frequency | 560 kHz |
| Format | Sports |
| Power | 4,500 watts (daytime) 75 watts (nighttime) |
| Class | D |
| Facility ID | 41062 |
| Callsign meaning | Nashville's SportsRadio |
| Affiliations | Yahoo! Sports Radio |
| Owner | Southern Wabash Communications of Middle Tennessee, Inc. |
| Webcast | Listen Live |
| Website | wnsr.com |
WNSR (560 AM) is a Nashville-area Class D radio station operating on the AM frequency of 560 kHz. WNSR's majority owner is Randolph Victor Bell, and the station's general manager is former WSM personality Ted Johnson.
The station broadcasts a mixture of local and national sports events and local and national sports talk shows. It once served as the "backup" affiliate of the Nashville Predators NHL team, originating their games when the primary affiliate, WGFX-FM, has a conflicting commitment to the Vanderbilt University sports network. However, the station serves as the affiliate for all Vanderbilt women's basketball games, and select Vanderbilt baseball games (the rest are broadcast on the Internet). The station broadcasts Major League Baseball games as a member of the Los Angeles Dodgers Radio Network.[1]
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The station converted to its current format in 1996, with the call letters WYOR (later WHEW), when all-sports programming began its meteoric rise in the North American radio market, particularly on AM stations. It was previously affiliated with ESPN Radio; however, in 2005, ESPN moved its affiliation to WNFN (then WNPL), an FM station. WNSR is currently affiliated with Yahoo! Sports Radio (formerly One-On-One Sports and Sporting News Radio).
WNSR is licensed to the Nashville suburb of Brentwood, Tennessee in adjoining Williamson County. Its 4,500-watt daytime signal is transmitted from a four-tower antenna in eastern Williamson County in a north-northeast/south-southeast directional pattern; this is due in part to the 5,000-watt daytime signal of a much older Class B 560 kHz station, WHBQ, just under 200 airline miles away in Memphis. As a result, WNSR's signal can be very difficult to receive in Nashville's eastern and especially western suburbs, but the station can be heard clearly from as far away as South Central Kentucky and North Alabama between sunrise and sunset. At night, when WHBQ has a 1,000-watt signal, WNSR broadcasts at an even more limited level of power (75 watts) from a nondirectional, one-tower antenna just southeast of downtown Nashville. Thus, the station's nighttime signal does not fully encompass the entire metropolitan area.
WNSR currently is in affilation with Yahoo! Sports Radio (formerly Sporting News Radio), and broacasts several of their national shows throughout the evenings and weekends. The station also broadcasts nationally syndicated program The Jim Rome Show. Local progamming includes:
WNSR has employed a number of on-air personalities from Chip Ramsey (1996–2000) to Tennessee sports writer Joe Biddle (2006–present). In between, there have been a plethora of Middle Tennessee sports journalists including the duo of Greg Pogue and David Coleman (a pair which has anchored the morning show since 2002), Greg Ruff, Don West, and Tim Swift (stalwarts in the mid-day slot from 2003 until September 2008), Bill King, Eric Yutzy, and Bob McClellan. The station has also aired a number of national and regional shows, including the Dan Patrick-Rob Dibble and Tony Kornheiser shows from their ESPN days, and the Tim Brando and the Two Live Stews shows from their current Yahoo! Sports Radio affiliation as well as the Maxed Out Show starring the folksy ex-coach Max Howell.
The network broadcast an early-afternoon show starring former late-night home-shopping network legend and TNA Wrestling announcer Don West and his sidekick Tim Swift. West and Swift (and their weekly guests Bob McClellan, Eric Yutzy, Greg Ruff, and others) were replaced by a duo from then-Sporting News Radio network calling themselves the Two Live Stews. TLS was in turn replaced on Monday, February 16, 2009, by the Thom Abraham Show. (The Abraham show had been recently cancelled on then-ESPN Radio affiliate, WNFN, 106.7 The Fan.
Bill King, the drive-time host since 2003 (joined by Joe Biddle in 2006) has been a fixture on Nashville sports talk radio since the mid-1980s, and his candid assessments of the University of Tennessee and Tennessee Titans have won him a loyal listenership for more than two decades. Biddle first enjoyed talk radio fame as a side-item on Nashville's sports talk ratings juggernaut "Sports Night" with George Plaster. He joined King in 2006 after an unsuccessful radio bid with Blake Fulton after Biddle and Fulton split with Plaster.
On July 31, 2009, it was announced that WNSR would broadcast Middle Tennessee State University football and men's basketball games. This affiliation began with the start of the 2009 football season.
The station also broadcast the football games of local private high school Franklin Road Academy for one year during the 2008 season during their first season with new head coach David Pack. This programming has since been discontinued.
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