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WKVL 850 Knoxville/Maryville

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ok walters

Guest
I am doing some sales work with WKVL and the two other stations WGAP 1400 and WLOD 1140. WKVL is now running on a STA on a long wire at 1 KW in Maryville. Any input on the history of these frequencies? Current owners are very nice local people and the equipment and studios are first class. I know Pirkle was involved in a LMA at one point so...
 
AM 850 was a 50kw 3 tower directional station licensed to Knoxville. It was the original WIVK-AM first @ 860 then to 850 and the power increase. It was donated to the University of Tenn. (not sure of the year) then sold to J. Bazel Mull as the AM to WJBZ-FM. Horne Properties purchased it and tried several formats then turned it off. Blount Broadcasting bought it and leased the tower site from Horne, when the lease ran out it went dark for almost a year until getting back on the air on the WGAP tower.

WGAP has always been a Maryville station and done well and they got an FM @ 95.7 and it was WGAP AM/FM. The FM was sold off and Horne Properties bought the AM. It was sold about 8 years ago to Ron Meredith and he simulcast WYSH on it until Blount Broadcasting bought it about a year or so ago. If they could pick up a translator for it and AM 850 I think it could do well in the Maryville/Alcoa market.

WLOD, I don't see how this station has stayed on the air since it went on back in the 80's. It had an FM @ 99.1 but it was sold off years ago. I am surprised that it hasn't gone dark but with a translator it might do OK in the Loudon area. There are a couple of LPFM's in Loudon County and they are running local sports so it may be hard for it to find a niche in the advertising money.

I am sure there are more qualified people than myself that could go deeper into the history of the stations .
 
Very good rundown knoxbob. The only thing I would add is that a few years ago 850 was leased to Pirkle to run his talk format. It was dropped a few months after the 94.3 lease ran out and he moved the main talk format there (a secondary talk format ran for awhile longer on 850.) Through all of these changes, WLOD was the only one to run their classic country format the whole time.
 
I think UT got 850 in the late 80's (my memories of that decade are a little fuzzy) and let the communications dep't run it as all-news.
 
spinetingler said:
I think UT got 850 in the late 80's (my memories of that decade are a little fuzzy) and let the communications dep't run it as all-news.
Click to expand...
That's right. Jim Dick gave the station to UT after the deal he made to sell it fell through. At first UT carried CNN Headline News TV audio on the station, then went to business news. UT wasn't really interested in the station and sold it to J. Bazzel Mull, a blind Baptist preacher, who owned several stations in East Tennessee. He operated the station briefly in conjunction with his highly successful Seymour FM station; then sold it back to Dick when the FCC allowed multiple station ownership within a market. From there it went to Horne, then Blount Broadcasting.
 
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