WWLS-FM

WWLS-FM (98.1 FM) is a radio station broadcasting a sports talk format. Licensed to The Village, Oklahoma, USA, the station serves the Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, USA, area. The station is currently owned by Cumulus Media and features programming from CBS Radio, ESPN Radio and Westwood One. Its studios are in Northwest Oklahoma City, and the transmitter is on the Northeast side.

History

Early years

The station was put on the air in a small house on 1305 South Boulevard Street in Edmond, Oklahoma, (radio station in his home, transmitter in the bedroom, studio in the garage) his wife threatened to leave unless the radio station was moved out of the house. In 1964, the station moved to Kelly street at a frequency of 97.7 MHz, with call letters KWHP (from the initials of William "Bill" Haydon Payne, its owner). It was top 40, one of the first AOR station in the nation/underground rock, country, oldies and a variety of other formats throughout its earlier existence. (Bill Payne moved on to Tulsa to buy KTFX 103.3 in 1978, and still owns stations in Eastern Oklahoma. In 1978, call letters change to KCFX (representing the change to country and the station mascot "the Fox"). In 1979, Payne sold the station.*PAYNE website It later became KKLR and then KTNT. Porter Davis (whose family owned Davis Foods distributors) brought Jazz into the market as a Smooth Jazz outlet in the early 1990s as KTNT "97.7 The Trend". In the late 1990s, the station changed. Citadel Broadcasting purchased the station, along with "SportsRadio 640" WWLS-AM and "Sports Talk 1340" KEBC, in 1998.