Broadcast area Nashville, Tennessee ERP 100,000 watts Class C0 Frequency 99.7 MHz Format News, Talk radio Area Nashville | First air date March 29, 1979 HAAT 395 meters (1295 feet) Facility ID 31476 City of license Hendersonville Owner Cumulus Media Branding SuperTalk 99.7 WTN | |
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Slogan Accurate News and Stimulating Talk | ||
WWTN (99.7 MHz) is a commercial FM radio station serving the Nashville, Tennessee media market. Home to many local and national talk radio shows, the station is marketed as SuperTalk 99.7 WTN (the first W is eliminated for simplicity). It is owned by Cumulus Media. WWTN operates at 100,000 watts and is a Class C0 station.
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WWTN is licensed to the city of Hendersonville, Tennessee which is approximately 15 miles (24 km) northeast of Nashville. Its antenna (395 meters/1296 feet in height above average terrain, 604 meters/1982 feet above sea level) is located approximately 25 miles (40 km) SSE of Nashville in Rutherford County, Tennessee, between the cities of Murfreesboro and Franklin. The station's studios are in the Music Row district of Nashville.
History
On March 29, 1979, the station first signed on the air as WMSR-FM, licensed to the city of Manchester, Tennessee. It began focusing on the Nashville market in the early 1990s. Manchester is nearly halfway between Nashville and Chattanooga, but the Cumberland Plateau prevents a Manchester FM signal from penetrating Chattanooga, and vice versa. Currently, its far-reaching signal covers most of Middle Tennessee, even venturing into parts of Northern Alabama and Southern Kentucky. The city of license changed to Hendersonville in 2008, as part of a larger project that saw four of Cumulus' five Nashville stations change cities of license in the process of allowing sister station WNFN to move its transmitter and increase power.
The station was mired in bankruptcy in the early 1990s until being purchased by Gaylord Entertainment Company in 1995. Gaylord also owned 650 WSM (AM) and 95.5 WSM-FM, as well as the Grand Ole Opry concert hall and Opryland USA amusement park. During this period, WWTN broadcast a mixture of locally originated general interest talk programming, sports talk, and the Business Talk Radio Network. Within three years subsequent to the Gaylord purchase, WWTN was Nashville's highest-billing radio station. In 2003, WWTN and WSM-FM were sold to Cumulus Media for $65 million [1].
Programming
WWTN serves as the flagship station for the nationally syndicated weekday afternoon talk show hosted by Phil Valentine and also offers local programs on from weekdays mornings till early afternoons, hosted by Ralph Bristol, Michael DelGiorno and Dan Mandis. The weekday evening schedule is provided by the Westwood One Network, a subsidiary of Cumulus Media: The Mark Levin Show, The Savage Nation with Michael Savage and Red Eye Radio.
Weekends feature shows on money, health, real estate, cars, guns and computers, including syndicated shows from Kim Komando, Larry Kudlow and Bill Cunningham. Some weekend hours are paid brokered programming. At night and on weekends, most hours begin with world and national news from Westwood One News.
In 1992, WWTN began airing a local show entitled The Money Game with Dave Ramsey, Hal Wilson, and Roy Matlock. Wilson and Matlock would leave the show at different points in its early history. With Ramsey hosting alone, his company assumed ownership of the program, which was renamed The Dave Ramsey Show in 1996 and was eventually independently syndicated to over 500 stations nationwide. WWTN served as the nominal flagship until 2012, when Ramsey moved the show to WPRT-FM in 2013, and then to WLAC in 2014.
Market competition
WWTN's primary talk competition is 1510 WLAC, an AM talk radio station owned by iHeartMedia, and non-commercial NPR network affiliate 90.3 WPLN-FM.