WYSE

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WYSE (970 AM) is a radio station located in Canton, North Carolina, that simulcasts WISE's sports talk format from Asheville, North Carolina. Owned by Saga Communications, the station is licensed by the FCC to broadcast with 5000 Watts of power during the day and 30 Watts at night.

The station is an affiliate of the Atlanta Braves radio network, the largest radio affiliate network in Major League Baseball.^[1]

[edit] History

970 AM signed on in 1949 as WWIT (call letters stood for "W"here "W"heels of "I"ndustry "T"urn). WWIT was daytime-only and broadcast with only 1000 watts. It featured a Big Band format that gave way to a Top 40 format by the late 1950s^{[citation needed]}. Teenagers at that time considered "Nat the Cat," an afternoon host, a favorite DJ ^[2]. Bob Caldwell of WLOS worked at WWIT in the early 1960s^[3]. The station was known on the air as "Big-IT" and "97-IT" by the late 1970s.

In 1979, WWIT increased its signal to 5000 Watts, but was still daytime only. The Top 40 format, now known as CHR, continued until the mid-1980s when it gradually switched over to Adult Contemporary^{[citation needed]}. Prior to 1992, WWIT aired Pisgah High School football ^[4].The station was sold in 1994, to a new company that took the station Classic Rock as "970 WWIT". It eventually went into bankruptcy by 2000 and was sold, becoming WBCG with a Country format.

In September of 2001, the station was sold to another company that switched the station to Oldies and reclaimed the WWIT call letters. It was sold to Saga Communications in 2003 and became a full-time simulcast of WOXL's Oldies format. The station again dropped the WWIT call letters for WOXL. It became WLZR in 2005 and WYSE in 2006.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Query the FCC's AM station database for WYSE
• Radio Locator Information on WYSE
• Query Arbitron's AM station database for WYSE

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