KKSY-FM

KKSY-FM (96.5 FM, "96.5 Kiss Country") is a 100,000 watt radio station in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. It is a country music formatted station owned by iHeartMedia, Inc..

History

KKSY-FM signed on February 27, 1963, as WMT-FM at 96.5 FM with an easy listening, jazz and classical music format. There were 90-minute classical music segments in the morning and evening with regular programs of jazz and music from Broadway musicals. Some of those early announcers were Keith Webster, Bill Dutcher, Don John Ross, Bill Grubbe, and Jim Wicks as well as other WMT announcers who took the helm of hosting on FM. In the early days, programming was totally separate from WMT radio but in the late 1960s, WMT-FM started simulcasting the 15-minute newscasts of WMT AM 600 several times a day. In the 1970s, it became a full-time "beautiful music" station before adopting an adult contemporary format in the early 1980s in an era when many beautiful music stations went to a soft rock or more contemporary format. WMT-FM's studios have been located at Broadcast Park on Collins Road in Cedar Rapids, along with its AM sister station WMT and TV station KGAN (the former WMT-TV), since it signed on. Until the 1970s, the studios of WMT radio was located on the fifth floor of the historic Paramount Theater building in downtown Cedar Rapids. It was one of the few stations with a callsign beginning with W located west of the Mississippi River.