City Staunton, Virginia Frequency 99.7 FM MHz | Branding "HitKicker 99.7" First air date August 1, 1984 | |
Broadcast area Charlottesville, Virginia
Harrisonburg, Virginia
Staunton, Virginia Slogan "Central Virginia's Country" | ||
WCYK-FM (99.7 FM) is a Country formatted broadcast radio station licensed to Staunton, Virginia, serving Charlottesville, Harrisonburg, and Staunton in Virginia. WCYK-FM is owned and operated by Monticello Media.
History
WANV-FM signed on August 1, 1984 with a light adult contemporary format. The station was co-owned by M. Robert "Bob" Rogers' High Fidelity Music Show, Inc. with country WANV (970 kHz) in Waynesboro. Bob Rogers was the former manager of WGMS in Washington, and with his wife Terry ran a series of annual High Fidelity Music Show expos to showcase the latest in home audio technology. The station initially transmitted from Elliott Knob west of Staunton, high enough to cover the Staunton-Waynesboro-Harrisonburg portion of the Shenandoah Valley.
In 1989, WANV-FM received a permit to move to Bear Den Mountain, just east of Waynesboro and north of Afton Mountain. Although this site is roughly 1,500 feet lower than Elliott Knob, it affords a much wider coverage area, with local-grade service to the Charlottesville metro in addition to the valley to the west. The station flipped to oldies during 1991.
Bob Rogers died in 1992, and the two stations passed to his son as executor, who began looking for a buyer. In March 1994, Michael Douglass' Clark Broadcasting Company bought WANV-FM along with longtime Charlottesville country stations WCYK (810 kHz) and WCYK-FM (102.3 MHz), based in Crozet. Clark changed the callsign to WVAO-FM and kept the oldies format. To take advantage of the 99.7 MHz facility's superior signal, Clark then moved the more popular country format and WCYK-FM callsign from 102.3 in February 1996. That station took the oldies and WVAO-FM callsign in return.
Clear Channel entered the Charlottesville market by buying Clark's three FM stations in 1998. The company ran the station as "Country 99.7", but otherwise did not make changes.
Clear Channel exited the Charlottesville market in June 2007 by selling all of its stations to George Reed's Sistema 102 LLC, which was later renamed Monticello Media. On November 3, 2007, Monticello tweaked the station's branding to "Your Country 99.7". On the morning of September 16, 2010, the station adopted the current "Hitkicker 99.7" brand, which came with changes to airstaff but not music.