WKBI (AM)

WKBI
City of license Saint Marys, Pennsylvania
Branding Classy 1400 & 94.5
Slogan "America's Best Music"
Frequency 1400 (kHz)
Format Adult Standards
Power 1,000 watts
Class C
Facility ID 65603
Owner Dennis and Rose Heindl
(Laurel Media, Inc.)
Sister stations WKBI-FM, WDDH
Website wkbiradio.com

WKBI, known as "Classy 1400", is an adult standards music formatted radio station based in Saint Marys, Pennsylvania. WKBI is the only AM radio station in Elk County. In 2013, the station came under the ownership of Laurel Media, Inc., owners of WDDH.

History

WKBI was the very first radio station in Elk County, and there was no radio station on the air in neighboring Cameron County at the time, which is why its parent company is known as Elk-Cameron Broadcasting. Neighboring Forest County also did not have (and still doesn't have) a local radio station of its own. Cameron County did not receive its own radio station until WLEM first signed on the air on March 2, 1958 followed by its same-named FM sister station 27 years later.

WKBI remains the sole AM radio station in all of Elk County. For a time, WKBI was the flagship station of AMN, first having signed on the air July 23, 1950, and was thus the first station in the group. That changed five years later, when AMN founder Cary H. Simpson signed on WTRN in Tyrone. Operations for the AMN were then moved to Tyrone.

WKBI gained an FM sister station in 1966, which became known as WKBI-FM. That station is known today as B94.

WKBI's original studio location was in the Mullendean Hotel, next to the G.C. Murphy Co. The hotel was torn down in the mid '60s to expand Murphy's, and the studio was moved to a location above the Firestone store. In the early 1970s, WKBI-AM-FM moved to a new building constructed at the station's transmitter site on Melody Lane, located just outside of the St. Mary's city limits, where it remains today.

In the 1990s and 2000s, WKBI was an owned-and-operated affiliate of the Allegheny Mountain Radio Network. That network was dismantled over the course of the late 2000s; WKBI was sold to Laurel Media (owners of WDDH) in late 2012 as part of the dismantling. The sale was consummated on January 31, 2013 at a purchase price of $766,047 for both WKBI and sister station WKBI-FM.

External links

Coordinates: 41°24′56″N 78°33′56″W / 41.41556°N 78.56556°W