WWST (102.1 FM, "Star 102.1") is a

radio station Radio broadcasting is transmission of audio (sound), sometimes with related metadata, by radio waves to radio receivers belonging to a public audience. In terrestrial radio broadcasting the radio waves are broadcast by a land-based radio ...

licensed to

Sevierville, Tennessee Sevierville ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Sevier County, Tennessee, located in eastern Tennessee. The population was 17,889 at the 2020 United States Census. History Native Americans of the Woodland period were among the first human ...

, and serving the

Knoxville Knoxville is a city in and the county seat of Knox County in the U.S. state of Tennessee. As of the 2020 United States census, Knoxville's population was 190,740, making it the largest city in the East Tennessee Grand Division and the state's ...

market. The station is owned by SummitMedia. The station is a Top 40 (CHR) station that broadcasts with 15,000 watts of power and is known on-air as "Star 102.1, Your #1 Hit Music Station".

History

102.1 FM was known as WSEV-FM (co-owned with WSEV/930 in Sevierville) in its early years and was automated. On December 2, 1987, the station started playing a mix of

adult contemporary Adult contemporary music (AC) is a form of radio-played popular music, ranging from 1960s vocal and 1970s soft rock music to predominantly ballad-heavy music of the present day, with varying degrees of easy listening, pop, soul, R&B, quie ...

and

country music Country (also called country and western) is a genre of popular music that originated in the Southern and Southwestern United States in the early 1920s. It primarily derives from blues, church music such as Southern gospel and spirituals, ...

as "U-102". Eventually, the station started playing adult contemporary exclusively.

WMYU and WWST frequency swap

WMYU has been on the 102.1 frequency since 1985. They were known as U102 and listed in the Tennessee Football program as a station that carried the Vol Network football broadcast identified as WMYU Sevierville/Knoxville. They were also the official sponsoring station of Boomsday which takes place on Sunday night before Labor Day and started back in 1986. On that same date,

sister station In broadcasting, sister stations or sister channels are radio or television stations operated by the same company, either by direct ownership or through a management agreement. Radio sister stations will often have different formats, and somet ...

93.1 FM changed to ''Star 93.1 FM'' with the call sign "WWST". On March 9, 2001, the two stations swapped frequencies moving the WWST call letters to 102.1 FM as ''Star 102.1'' while the " WMYU" call letters were moved to 93.1 FM where they remained until late 2008.

Journal Communications Journal Media Group (formerly Journal Communications) was a Milwaukee, Wisconsin-based newspaper publishing company. The company's roots were first established in 1882 as the owner of its namesake, the ''Milwaukee Journal'', and expanded into br ...

and the

E. W. Scripps Company The E. W. Scripps Company is an American broadcasting company founded in 1878 as a chain of daily newspapers by Edward Willis "E. W." Scripps and his sister, Ellen Browning Scripps. It was also formerly a media conglomerate. The company is he ...

announced on July 30, 2014 that the two companies would merge to create a new broadcast company under the E. W. Scripps Company name that owned the two companies' broadcast properties, including WWST. The transaction was completed in 2015, pending shareholder and regulatory approvals. Scripps exited radio in 2018; the Knoxville stations went to SummitMedia in a four-market, $47 million deal completed on November 1, 2018.

References

External links

star1021fm facebookStar 102.1 official website
WST Contemporary hit radio stations in the United States Radio stations established in 1978 1978 establishments in Tennessee {{Tennessee-radio-station-stub