WWTN

Last updated

WWTN
Broadcast area Nashville metropolitan area
Frequency 99.7 MHz
BrandingSuperTalk 99.7 WTN
Programming
Format News/Talk
Network ABC News Radio
Affiliations Westwood One
Ownership
Owner
WKDF, WGFX, WSM-FM, WQQK
History
First air date
June 20, 1962;63 years ago (June 20, 1962)
Former call signs
WMSR-FM (1962–1990)
WQLZ (1990–1991)
Technical information
Facility ID 31476
Class C0
ERP 100,000 watts
HAAT 395 meters (1,296 ft)
Links
Webcast Listen live
Website 997wtn.com

WWTN (99.7 FM) is a commercial radio station serving the Nashville media market. The station is owned by Cumulus Media and is marketed as "SuperTalk 99.7 WTN" (the first W of its call sign is eliminated for simplicity). WWTN is licensed to the city of Hendersonville, Tennessee, which is approximately 15 miles (24 km) northeast of Nashville. The station's studios are in the Music Row district of Nashville.

Contents

WWTN transmits with an effective radiated power of 100,000 watts, the maximum for most FM stations, and is a Class C0 station. [1] Its signal covers most of Middle Tennessee, even venturing into parts of Northern Alabama and Southern Kentucky. Its antenna (395 meters/1296 feet in height above average terrain) is located approximately 25 miles (40 km) SSE of Nashville in Rutherford County, Tennessee, between the cities of Murfreesboro and Franklin.

Programming

WWTN's primary competition is WLAC 1510 AM, a talk radio station owned by iHeartMedia, Inc. Talk and information programs are also heard on non-commercial NPR member station 90.3 WPLN-FM owned by Nashville Public Radio.

Schedule

Weekdays on WWTN features local and nationally syndicated conservative talk shows. [2] Local hosts are heard all morning and in afternoon drive time. In middays, Texas-based Chad Benson deals with national and Tennessee issues. The weekday evening schedule from the co-owned Westwood One network includes The Mark Levin Show and Red Eye Radio .

Weekends features programs on special interests, including syndicated programs The Kim Komando Show and Sunday Night with Bill Cunningham . Some weekend hours are paid brokered programming. Most hours begin with an update from ABC News Radio.

History

The station first signed on the air on June 20, 1962. The original call sign was WMSR-FM, licensed to the Manchester Broadcasting Company in the city of Manchester, Tennessee. [3] In the mid-1960s, the licensee was changed to Joseph M. Carter, Trustee in bankruptcy.

In the early 1990s, the station began focusing on the Nashville market. Manchester is nearly halfway between Nashville and Chattanooga, although the Cumberland Plateau prevents Manchester FM signals from serving Chattanooga.

The station faced major financial difficulties in the early 1990s, until being purchased by Gaylord Entertainment Company in 1995. Gaylord also owned 650 WSM (AM) and 95.5 WSM-FM, as well as the Grand Ole Opry concert hall and Opryland USA amusement park. During this period, WWTN broadcast a mixture of locally originated general interest talk programming, sports talk, and the Business Talk Radio Network. Within three years after the Gaylord purchase, WWTN was Nashville's highest-billing radio station.

Ramsey and Valentine

In 1992, WWTN began airing The Money Game, a local financial advice show with Dave Ramsey, Hal Wilson, and Roy Matlock. Wilson and Matlock left the show at different points in its early history. With Ramsey hosting alone, his company assumed ownership of the program, which was renamed The Dave Ramsey Show in 1996. It was eventually independently syndicated to over 500 stations nationwide. WWTN served as the flagship station until 2012, when Ramsey moved the show to 102.5 WPRT-FM in 2013, and then to WLAC 1510 AM in 2014.

In 2003, WWTN and WSM-FM were sold to Cumulus Media for $65 million. [4] The city of license changed to Hendersonville in 2008, as part of a larger project that saw four of Cumulus' five Nashville stations change cities of license in the process of allowing sister station WNFN to move its transmitter and increase power.

WWTN served as the flagship station for a nationally syndicated weekday afternoon talk show hosted by Phil Valentine until July 2021, when his health deteriorated from COVID-19 and its after-effects. Valentine died on August 21, 2021.

See also

References

  1. ↑ "WWTN-FM 99.7 MHz - Hendersonville, TN". radio-locator.com.
  2. ↑ InsideRadio.com "Nashville Supertalk 99.7 Resets Line-up for 2025" Dec. 4, 2025. Retrieved May 30, 2025.
  3. ↑ "WMSR-FM" (PDF). Broadcasting Yearbook. 1968. p. B-153 (301). Retrieved August 10, 2020.
  4. ↑ Cumulus Media Inc. Announces Acquisition in Nashville, TN Archived 2005-05-24 at the Wayback Machine

35°49′03″N86°31′24″W / 35.817556°N 86.523333°W / 35.817556; -86.523333

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.