Early years On October 5, 1961, the station first signed on as WBBY, a daytimer broadcasting at 500 watts. WBBY was owned by Madison County Broadcasting Company and served the Wood River area with local news, sports and other programming. It began nighttime operations in 1964. Its
easy listening music format was among the most highly rated stations in St. Louis. Among the best known announcers were Grant Horton, Paul Warner, Frank Akers, Jim Scanlan and Ed Goodman. In the 1980s, WRTH transitioned to an
adult standards format, which it aired until September 1988, when it flipped to
oldies as WKLL,
Kool 590. which stood for
Chief Executive Officer. On January 1, 1991, the station adopted an
easy listening format with the call sign KEZK adopted that January 29; In February 1993, KEZK began simulcasting the soft AC programming of its FM sister station.
Move to sports talk On April 5, 1993, KEZK switched to a
sports radio format as
590 The Fan; the call sign changed to KFNS that July 9.
Brief experiment as "The Man" On May 1, 2013, KFNS flipped to a talk/comedy format, branded as
590 The Man. In addition, sister station
KXFN flipped to a female-centric talk format as
1380 The Woman. In 2014, KFNS shifted back to sports (but retained the "Man" branding), with the previous format shifting over to KXFN as
1380 The X. Its investors included former
St. Louis Rams offensive tackle
Orlando Pace and former
St. Louis Blues player
Keith Tkachuk.
1380 The X was subsequently subject to significant turmoil, including lawsuits against the ownership, physical fights behind the scenes and verbal attacks on-air. KFNS went off the air on October 31, 2014 after the station stopped paying its bills, resulting in the local utility company
Ameren turning off the power to its transmitter site. Following the shutdown, Grand Slam Sports announced that the company would focus on sister station
KXFN and sell KFNS to a religious group. TalkSTL programming was simulcast on both stations until December 2015, when KXFN went silent, with KFNS continuing to air TalkSTL programming. The station was sold to Markel Radio Group, effective February 22, 2016, for $300,000. In September 2016, Markel leased the station's broadcast day to former KFNS host Tim McKernan and his company, InsideSTL Enterprises; McKernan had previously leased
WGNU on weekdays. On June 27, 2024, Barrett Sports Media reported that the station would shut down at the end of June. Zobrist clarified that the station would remain on the air, but that its local talk programming would cease as it shifted to a full-time
Fox Sports Radio feed with "some play by play" while Zobrist sought a buyer. In October, Zobrist updated the situation and noted that no progress had been made in the sale.
Shift to talk; closure In April 2025, Zobrist announced the sale of a majority stake in the station to Big Toe Media, a consortium that included David Greene and Conrad Thompson. Big Toe's plans included broadening the station's focus to a general interest (and partially
brokered)
talk radio station discussing "anything except for politics" and changing the station's call sign. Greene stated that he had initially been hired to shop the KFNS intellectual properties to other buyers and, after the most promising prospect dropped out of contention, agreed to buy the station from Zobrist themselves at a greatly discounted rate from its previous sale price. On April 25, 2025, the
Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approved the station's sale. On June 1, 2025, the call letters were changed to KLIS and the station flipped to its new wide ranging talk format as "The Lou Information Station". On March 3, 2026, KLIS went off the air and surrendered its license to the FCC. The license was cancelled on March 4. ==References==