City Fresno, California Branding Y101 Frequency 101.1 (MHz) | Broadcast area Fresno, California Slogan "Today's Best Music" First air date 1969 | |
KWYE (101.1 FM, "Y101") is a radio station located in the Fresno, California, area that airs an Hot Adult Contemporary music format. The station is owned by Cumulus Media. Its studios are located at the Radio City building on Shaw Avenue in North Fresno and its transmitter is northeast of Clovis.
History
The original callsign for 101.1 FM was KCIB at a different frequency of 94.5. It began as a religious FM station, later switching to middle-of-the-road music using the call letters KFIG. KCIB was co-located in Clovis at a sight shared with KXQR-FM and KAIL TV 53. In late 1969, the format was changed to an "underground" album rock format patterned after San Francisco's KMPX. This format lasted until the late 1970s, when the format was changed to Adult Contemporary, "Mellow Music". In 1984, the station adopted the "Yes/No Radio" format, where several times a day KFIG would play a song and invite listeners to call in and vote on whether or not KFIG should continue playing that song. After the "Yes/No Radio" format was retired, the station went back to being a regular Adult Contemporary station.
In September, 1992, the callsign was changed to KSXY. Despite the obvious connotation of "Sexy" implied by that callsign, station management initially insisted that they were NOT meaning to imply "Sexy" by that choice of callsign. For about six months, the airstaff read the call letters as K-S (pause) X-Y. After that time, the station nickname was changed to "Sexy 101.1".
Sexy 101.1 lasted until Headliner Broadcasting sold the station to EBE Broadcasting, who owned KNAX and KFRE-AM. The new owners changed the format of KSXY to country. They heralded the format change by playing nothing but Garth Brooks music under the "101.1 K-Garth" name. After that stunt had run its course, "Froggy Country 101.1" KRBT took over the frequency. Froggy Country was a satellite format and did not make much of a ratings impact in the Fresno market.
When the station was sold to Infinity Broadcasting, owners of KSKS, the format was changed to a Modern A/C format with the nickname of "Star 101". The callsign was changed to KVSR at that time. Star 101 was successful until KTHT changed format to "Alice", which gave them some competition. Both stations competed with the format until Star 101 threw in the towel, becoming Y 101 sometime in 2002. As Y-101, they fired most of their air staff and began a new on-air campaign changing to a top 40 format and branding themselves as y101 #1 for all the hits, hiring a whole new staff of DJ's and starting a new morning show called y101 Morning Zoo.
On December 13, 2006 new owners Peak Broadcasting pulled the plug on KWYE's Top 40 format for Adult Contemporary, billing themselves as the place for "Today's Hits, Yesterday Favorites." The reason for this might have to do with Fresno/Hanford/Visalia radio market already being saturated with two other Top 40s, Rhythmic rivals KBOS and KSEQ. Although KWYE maintained good ratings in the market, it wasn't enough to overtake the Rhythmics, especially in a market with a large Hispanic population.
Recently, KWYE has tweaked its format to include more current hits, dropping the hits from the 1970s from their playlist, and changing their slogan to "80's, 90's, Now." In Mid-April 2009, KWYE segued into a Modern AC format.
On August 30, 2013, a deal was announced in which Townsquare Media would purchase Peak Broadcasting, and then immediately swap Peak's Fresno stations, including KWYE, to Cumulus Media in exchange for Cumulus' stations in Dubuque, Iowa and Poughkeepsie, New York. The deal is part of Cumulus' acquisition of Dial Global; Peak, Townsquare, and Dial Global are all controlled by Oaktree Capital Management. The sale to Cumulus was completed on November 14, 2013.