WIKY-FM (104.1 MHz) is a full-service/

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 ...

music

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 ...

serving the

Evansville, Indiana Evansville is a city in, and the county seat of, Vanderburgh County, Indiana, United States. The population was 118,414 at the 2020 census, making it the state's third-most populous city after Indianapolis and Fort Wayne, the largest city i ...

radio market.

History

The call letters WIKY debuted in 1948, when John A. Engelbrecht gained the FCC license for 820 AM. WIKY signed on August 4, 1948. The studios were on the west side of Evansville, in a unique building with the studios in the basement and the Engelbrecht residence upstairs. In 1953, Engelbrecht obtained one of the first FM licenses available, at 104.1 MHz. The 820 AM frequency was sold to University of Southern Indiana and continues operation as

WSWI WSWI (820 AM) is a non-commercial educational radio station licensed to Evansville, Indiana, United States, carrying an alternative rock format known as "95.7 The Spin". Owned by the Board of Trustees of the University of Southern Indiana (USI), t ...

. Over the past 60 years, the Engelbrecht family maintained ownership of WIKY through their company South Central Communications, which owns 5 stations in Evansville, as well as radio stations in Nashville and Knoxville and a Muzak provider (South Central Sound). In the most recent Arbitron ratings report, WIKY is the most-listened-to radio station in the Evansville metro survey area. WIKY has been named "Best Radio Station" by the Evansville Courier Press "Reader's Choice" Awards the past two years, and was named "AC Station of the Year" (2008 - Markets 101+) by Radio and Records magazine. It was announced on May 28, 2014, that

Midwest Communications Midwest Communications is a Wausau, Wisconsin-based radio broadcasting company. It owns 82 radio stations located primarily within the Midwest United States, in Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Tennessee, Illinois and ...

would purchase 9 of the 10 Stations owned by South Central Communications. (This includes the Evansville Cluster which include WIKY-FM along with sister stations WABX,

WLFW WLFW is a Southern gospel-formatted radio station located in Johnston, South Carolina, and is part of the Augusta, Georgia, radio market (mostly on the South Carolina side of the Savannah River). The station is licensed by the Federal Communicati ...

WSTO WSTO (96.1 FM, "Hot 96") is a radio station that serves the Evansville, Indiana, Owensboro, Kentucky, and Henderson, Kentucky markets with a contemporary hit radio format. It is licensed to Owensboro and broadcasts from a 1,000-foot tower strat ...

.) With this purchase, Midwest Communications expanded its portfolio of stations to

Evansville Evansville is a city in, and the county seat of, Vanderburgh County, Indiana, United States. The population was 118,414 at the 2020 census, making it the state's third-most populous city after Indianapolis and Fort Wayne, the largest city in ...

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' ...

and

Nashville Nashville is the capital city of the U.S. state of Tennessee and the seat of Davidson County. With a population of 689,447 at the 2020 U.S. census, Nashville is the most populous city in the state, 21st most-populous city in the U.S., and th ...

. The sale was finalized on September 2, 2014, at a price of $72 million.

References

External links

IKY-FM Midwest Communications radio stations {{Indiana-radio-station-stub