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WSIX calls

What's the story behind the WSIX call letters? They were at 98 on both bands. Television perhaps?
Just curious
Merry Christmas
 
The Draughn brothers of Springfield owned The “638” Tire and Vulcanizing Company and their slogan was “Where Service Is eXcellent “, thus WSIX in about 1928. It relocated to Nashville in 1938. They changed the frequency to 980 kHz in 1942 from 1240, 1210 before that. FM came in 1946 then TV in 1953 originally on channel 8 before the swap with WDCN in 1973.
w/
 
And my favorite bit of trivia:

WSIX was TV channel 8 in Nashville (before later moving to 2 as previously stated)
WATE was (and still is) TV channel 6 in Knoxville.

And, by chance, the two stations are now co-owned.
 
More trivia. When WSIX moved to channel 2 the letters changed to WNGE, which stood for Nashville General Electric, who owned them at the time. That's when the engineers became the only union shop in town for local tv, since GE is heavy union labor.
The current letters WKRN were for the next owner, Knight Ridder Nashville.

Neither of those well financed companies could get a dent against National Life or Life & Casualty loyalty for channel 4 & 5. Somehow a fleding operator named Vince Young thought he was smarter than all of them and bought WKRN. I'm not sure if they're still in bankruptcy with Young Broadcasting still owning them but it's a common story. Everybody in broadcasting thinks he can do it better than the current owner and some go broke or at least loosing value, just to prove they're right.
 
for details on Young Broadcasting's big blunder..."google" KRON...
and read how they lost the NBC affiliation after WAY overpaying for the station. duhhh.
 
onetake said:
I'm not sure if they're still in bankruptcy with Young Broadcasting still owning them but it's a common story.

As part of the bankruptcy proceedings, management of WKRN has been turned over to Gray Television out of Atlanta, but the license and facilities are still owned by Young.

Gray owns a lot of small/medium market stations; the largest being WVLT 8 in Knoxville. They took over management of all of Young's stations (except 3, including KRON-San Francisco and WATE-Knoxville) in the bankruptcy.
 
Young creditors couldn't get anyone to show up at the auction other than tire kickers. Look for fire sale within two years, all of these TV companies are in way too deep!
 
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