WXKS-FM
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| WXKS-FM | |
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| City of license | Medford, Massachusetts |
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| Broadcast area | Boston, Massachusetts |
| Branding | "Kiss 108" |
| Slogan | "Boston's Hit Music Station" |
| Frequency | 107.9 (MHz) (Also on HD Radio) |
| First air date | 1960 |
| Format | Top 40 |
| ERP | 20,500 watts |
| HAAT | 235 meters |
| Class | B |
| Facility ID | 53965 |
| Callsign meaning | KS = Kiss 108 |
| Owner | Clear Channel Communications |
| Sister stations | WJMN, WKOX, WUBB, WXKS, |
| Webcast | Listen Live |
| Website | www.kiss108.com |
WXKS-FM, better known as Kiss 108, is a radio station in Boston, Massachusetts, licensed to nearby Medford. Owned by Clear Channel Communications, the station operates on 107.9 FM, and is a sister station to rhythmic top 40 WJMN, once a major rival to Kiss.
[edit] History
Kiss 108 is one of the most prominent top 40 stations in New England, notable primarily for its annual Kiss Concert, which draws some of the best-known names in the pop music business to Mansfield's Tweeter Center concert venue each spring. Morning DJ Matt Siegel has been a fixture on the Boston airwaves for several decades, and was briefly nationally syndicated during the late 1990s. Kiss 108 was also the flagship station for Open House Party Saturday hosted by John Garabedian, broadcasting from his house in suburban Boston, but on March 10, 2007, Kiss 108 dropped Saturday edition Open House Party and began a new show called The Saturday Night Mash-Up. The Sunday edition Open House Party show hosted by Kannon is now broadcast on Kiss 108 replacing the Saturday night show.
The station first went on the air at 107.9 as WHIL-FM, a simulcast of sister station WHIL-AM, and broadcasting its own programming after sunset when WHIL-AM signed-off. For much of the sixties, WHIL AM and FM were country-music stations, but in late 1972, both stations switched to beautiful music as WWEL-AM and FM ("Well").
Despite moving the FM transmitter to the top of the Prudential Tower in 1972, WWEL-FM was not very successful as a beautiful-music format. The stations were sold to Heftel Communications, operated by U.S. Rep. Cecil Heftel (D-Hawai'i) in early 1979. Heftel changed the call letters to WXKS, adopted "Kiss 108" as an identity and changed to a disco format. Under Heftel, the station soared to near the top of the Arbitron ratings, and forced WBOS (which had been first in Boston with a 24/7 disco sound and had a short period of huge success with it) out of the format in early 1980.
Sunny Joe White, a very talented young programmer (who had previously programmed WILD-AM in Boston) came aboard at Kiss-108 upon it's shift to disco and had much to do with the station's early success.
At the end of 1979, WXKS-AM dropped disco to adopt an adult standards format, while the FM slowly evolved into urban contemporary when disco's popularity crashed. It eventually became a mainstream contemporary hit station, the only one in the Boston market and one of the most influential Top 40 stations in the nation.
On 27 January 2006 WXKS-FM went live with an HD2 digital broadcast referred to by Clear Channel as the "Artists' Channel". The broadcast is also available as an Internet radio station.
On January 14 2008 WUBB (95.3 FM), in York, Maine, began simulcasting WXKS.
[edit] Trivia
Both WXKS-FM "Kiss 108" and WNKS-FM "Kiss 95.1", a Top-40 station owned by CBS Radio and based in Charlotte, North Carolina, use a similar logo to each other. KISS 108's current logo has been in effect since 1987.[citation needed] Both stations were owned by Pyramid Broadcasting before 95.1 was spun off to CBS in the mid-90s, while Pyramid and WXKS-FM merged into Clear Channel. The Kiss 108 branding predates the Clear Channel trademark of KISS-FM (see link).
WXKS was also the flagship station of the nationally syndicated Open House Party.
[edit] External links
- Official website
- Kiss 108 Playlist from June 25, 1979
- Query the FCC's FM station database for WXKS
- Radio Locator information on WXKS
- Query Arbitron's FM station database for WXKS
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