WFMW (730 AM) 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 ...

broadcasting a

classic country Classic country is a music radio format that specializes in playing mainstream country and western music hits from past decades. Repertoire The radio format specializes in hits from the 1950s through the early 1980s, and focus primarily on innov ...

format. Licensed to and serving

Madisonville, Kentucky Madisonville is a home rule-class city in and the county seat of Hopkins County, Kentucky, United States, located along Interstate 69 in the state's Western Coal Fields region. The population was 19,591 at the 2010 census. Madisonville is a com ...

, United States, the station is currently owned by Sound Broadcasters, Inc. and features programming from

CBS Radio CBS Radio was a radio broadcasting company and radio network operator owned by CBS Corporation and founded in 1928, with consolidated radio station groups owned by CBS and Westinghouse Broadcasting/Group W since the 1920s, and Infinity Broadc ...

History

The station began operation in 1947 as WCIF, which was under ownership of Pierce and Dutch Lackey. Two years later, the station launched its FM companion, WCIF-FM, at 104.9 megacycles. However, that same year, Messenger Broadcasting Company, a unit of the '' Madisonville Messenger'' newspaper, built and signed on WFMW-FM at 103.1 megacycles, which became Kentucky's first-ever FM-exclusive radio station. In 1950, the Messenger acquired the Lackey-owned station. As a result, WCIF and WFMW were consolidated to become one radio empire; WCIF-FM was permanently taken off the air, while the AM station was acquired to became WFMW to match the callsign of the surviving FM station (now WKTG), which later increased their power and changed frequencies to 93.9 MHz. On November 19, 1970, the station was knocked off the air due to winds blowing down the station's transmission tower. The AM station returned to the air the next day, but the FM was fed on local

cable television Cable television is a system of delivering television programming to consumers via radio frequency (RF) signals transmitted through coaxial cables, or in more recent systems, light pulses through fibre-optic cables. This contrasts with broa ...

by means of telephone line until the FM transmitter was repaired. The FM station became a separate entity in 1978, when it began broadcasting a classic rock format as WKTG, while WFMW became one of the first stations in western Kentucky to go exclusively country. WFMW remained in the hands of the original owners until being sold to various companies, including Sound Telecasters, Inc. Sound Telecasters sold WFMW and WKTG in June 2024 to Cadiz, Kentucky-based Ham Broadcasting, Inc. for a reported price of $815,000. Once the sale is finalized, Ham Broadcasting will take over operation of both stations, beginning July 1.

Programming

Programming on WFMW includes Madisonville Maroons high school sports, a tradio program called "Tell & Sell," a sports-talk program called "Kentucky Sports Radio," ''Country Gold with Randy Owen'', ''The Country Oldies Show'', ''Classic Country Rewind'', and ''Looking Up Country with Johnny Stone''. The local airstaff includes Danny Koeber, Pat Ballard and Kevin O'Connor.

References

External links

FMW Frontier Martial-Arts Wrestling is a Japanese professional wrestling promotion founded on July 28, 1989, by Atsushi Onita as (FMW). The promotion specializes in hardcore wrestling involving weapons such as barbed wire and fire. They held their ...

Country radio stations in the United States {{Kentucky-radio-station-stub