WKY

WKY (930 AM) is a commercial radio station in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, owned by Cumulus Media. It is the oldest radio station in Oklahoma and among the oldest in the nation. WKY airs a sports format which is simulcast with its sister station WWLS-FM. The studios and offices are in northwest Oklahoma City.

WKY's transmitter and its single tower are located on NE 91st Street in Oklahoma City. WKY is powered at 5,000 watts by day, using a 961 foot (293m) non-directional antenna that is the tallest AM radio tower in the United States. It once broadcast at night with a 5,000-watt directional signal, using a multiple tower array. Ownership decided to switch to non-directional nighttime operation, which allows WKY to need only one antenna, but required the station to drop to 510 watts at night.

Although Federal Communications Commission (FCC) records list WKY's "date first licensed" as March 16, 1922, station histories have generally traced its founding to earlier activities, beginning as early as January 1920 according to WKY co-founder Earl Clement Hull.

After the end of World War One, Hull was posted at Fort Sill in Oklahoma, where he taught radio communication classes. Using a supply of scarce vacuum tubes he described as being "borrowed" from the Signal Corps, he constructed a radio transmitter that was operated from his home at 1911 Ash Street in Oklahoma City. In June 1921, Hull was issued a license for amateur station 5QP, located at his residence.

In the spring of 1921, Hull founded the Oklahoma Radio Shop, initially located at Hull's home, as a partnership with Sherwood Richards. In the fall of 1921, the Oklahoma Radio Shop was issued a license for an experimental station, 5XT.

Eventually the Daily Oklahoman newspaper teamed up with the Oklahoma Radio Company to provide a daily series of broadcasts, from 8:00 to 9:00 p.m., beginning on March 5, 1922. A March 8 broadcast of Alma Gluck singing at the First Christian Church was described by the newspaper as its "first big broadcast", although the microphone had to be hidden behind a curtain, because the singer had refused to consent to making the broadcast.

Beginning in late 1912, radio communication in the United States was regulated by the Department of Commerce. Initially there were no formal standards for which stations could make broadcasts intended for the general public, and after World War One stations under a variety of license classes, most commonly Amateur and Experimental, began making regularly scheduled programs on a limited basis. In order to provide common standards for the service, the Commerce Department issued a regulation effective December 1, 1921, that stated that broadcasting stations would now have to hold a Limited Commercial license that authorized operation on two designated broadcasting wavelengths: 360 meters (833 kHz) for "entertainment", and 485 meters (619 kHz) for "market and weather reports". WKY's first license, as Oklahoma's first broadcasting station, was issued on March 16, 1922, to the Oklahoma Radio Shop in Oklahoma City, for operation on both wavelengths.

The WKY call sign was randomly assigned from a list of available call letters. Currently most stations west of the Mississippi River have call letters beginning with "K". However, WKY was licensed before the government changed the dividing line between W and K call signs. Prior to the January 1923 establishment of the Mississippi River as the boundary, call letters beginning with "W" were generally assigned to stations east of an irregular line formed by the western state borders from North Dakota south to Texas, with calls beginning with "K" going only to stations in states west of that line.