KYYS

KYYS
City Kansas City, Kansas
Broadcast area Kansas City, Missouri and Kansas City, Kansas.
Branding La X 1250 AM
Slogan La Súper Estación
Frequency 1250 kHz
First air date 1927
Format Regional Mexican
Power 25,000 watts day
3,700 watts night
Class B
Facility ID 73938
Transmitter coordinates 39°11′06″N 94°27′28″W / 39.18500°N 94.45778°W / 39.18500; -94.45778
Former callsigns WREN (1926-1999)[1]
KKGM (1999-2000)
KXTR (2000-2001)
KWSJ (2001-2002)
KKHK (2002-2008)
Operator Reyes Media Group
Owner Entercom
(Entercom License, LLC)
Website La X website

KYYS (1250 AM) is a radio station broadcasting a Regional Mexican format. The station, licensed to Kansas City, Kansas, United States, has had two prior call signs since adopting this format in 2001: KWSJ and KKHK. The station is currently owned by Entercom and operations are under a LMA with Reyes Media Group.

History

In Lawrence and Topeka

KYYS came on air in 1927 as Lawrence, Kansas-based WREN, named not only for the city of Lawrence but for Jenny Wren flour. It operated at 1090 kHz for its first months and then used to 1180 kHz, shared with KFKU, the radio station of the University of Kansas; radio reallocations in 1928 (to 1220 kHz) and 1940 (to 1250 kHz) moved both stations at the same time. KFKU, which shared time with WREN between 1927 and 1987, used its transmission facilities as well. WREN's transmitter was located in the storage room of the Bowersock Mills and Power Company, with the microphone sitting atop empty flour sacks.[2] In 1947, WREN moved to Topeka and placed its transmitter a mile east of Grantville, Kansas, on US Highway 24. The station also created the world's largest wren, today installed in the median of a Topeka street, that topped the station's studios. In 1952, former Governor Alf Landon and his family bought WREN, owning it until a 1982 sale to the Kassebaum Radio Group.

December 21, 1987, saw WREN go silent as the station fell on hard financial times,[3] thanks to unpaid salaries, wire service bills, income and Social Security taxes, and other lawsuits.[4] Additionally, KFKU, which had no transmitter of its own, fell silent for good. It would not be until December 9, 1991, after nearly four years without broadcasting, that WREN would return to the air with a satellite-fed gospel music format.

In Kansas City

In 1995, WREN applied with the FCC to move into Kansas City, exchanging its 5,000-watt Topeka facility for 15,000 watts day and 3,700 watts night from a new transmitter in Kansas City, Missouri. This move was approved in January 1997 and was followed by a sale to the Mortenson Broadcasting Company of Canton, a Christian broadcaster in 1997. Entercom acquired WREN the next year, and in 1999, ditched the heritage WREN callsign for KKGM to complement a sports format, "1250 the Game". This began a run of four callsign changes in four consecutive years, as the station became KXTR in 2000 with classical music (having been affected by the move of its sports competitor to a better frequency), KWSJ in 2001, and KKHK in 2002. It was under the latter two callsigns that 1250 began broadcasting in Spanish for the first time, initially under the moniker "La Súper X".

KYYS was the longtime call-sign for a rock format station, first located at 102.1 MHz (now KCKC-FM) and, until January 2008, at 99.7 MHz (now KZPT). The calls were transferred to retain presence within the media market, yet has no ties to either of its predecessors.

References

  1. ↑ Lippman, Leopold (February 23, 1958). "Some Radio Call Letters With a Message". The New York Times. Dog lovers can hear the familiar WOOF in Dothan, Ala., and bird-watchers look to Topeka, Kan., for a WREN, or to Oakland, Calif., for a KROW.
  2. ↑ "Lawrence newspapers existed before there was news". Lawrence Journal-World. 26 September 2004. Retrieved 29 July 2017.
  3. ↑ "Hearing Designation Order, MM Docket No. 96-109" (PDF). FCC. 6 May 1996. Retrieved 29 July 2017.
  4. ↑ "World's Largest Wren". World's Largest Things. Retrieved 29 July 2017.
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