WNOX

WNOX (93.1 FM, "Classic Hits 93.1") is a radio station broadcasting a classic hits music format. Licensed to the suburb of Karns, Tennessee, it serves the Knoxville, Tennessee metropolitan area. It first began broadcasting in 1988 under the call sign WCKS. The station is currently owned by E.W. Scripps Company.

History

After being assigned the call letters WCKS on October 3, 1988, this station switched call signs to WWZZ on December 3, 1990.

WWST and WMYU frequency swap

On May 20, 1994, 93.1 FM changed to Star 93.1 FM with the call sign "WWST". The format remained Top 40. On that same date, sister station WSEV-FM switched call letters to WMYU as Oldies 102. On March 9, 2001, the two stations swapped frequencies bringing "WMYU" to 93.1 FM while the WWST call letters were moved to 102.1 FM as Star 102.1 where they remain. WMYU most recently broadcast an 80s Oldies format until November 26, 2008, when the station switched to a country music format as Q93 switching their call sign to WCYQ. On May 9, 2013, WCYQ changed their call letters to WNOX, swapping calls with WNOX 100.3 FM Oak Ridge, Tennessee, which took the WCYQ calls.

WCYQ

WCYQ (100.3 FM) is a radio station in the Knoxville, Tennessee, area. The station broadcasts a country music format, which previously aired on 93.1 FM (now WNOX) until 2013.

WCYQ operates a 100,000-watt transmitter, located on Cross Mountain(elevation 3534 ft.) north of Briceville, Tennessee. Its signal can be received throughout East Tennessee as well as significant parts of southeastern Kentucky, and in small portions of Virginia, North Carolina, West Virginia and Georgia.

The former call sign WNOX was also the call letters of a co-owned AM station from the 1930s to 1988, and again from 1997 to 2005.

History

AM station

For years, the WNOX call letters belonged to the frequency AM 990. In November 1921, WNOX signed on the air as WNAV, the first radio station in Tennessee and one of the ten oldest in the country, and was licensed to broadcast at 833 kHz. In 1923, the station's initial owner, the First Baptist Church of Knoxville, sold it to the People's Telephone & Telegraph Company. Sterchi Brothers Furniture briefly owned the station before it was again sold to Scripps-Howard in 1935. The early WNAV studios were located in the St. James Hotel, which once stood near the head of Market Square. Within the span of its first 19 years, the station's call letters changed to WNOX, and the station frequency changed many times, eventually settling at AM 990 in March 1941.