WWOG The station first
signed on the air on September 1, 1965 as WWOG. It was originally a
non-commercial Christian radio station, owned by Homer and Carole Akers. In the 1970s, it was a
beautiful music outlet, still owned by the Akers, under the corporate name WWOG, Inc.
Country music In 1979, WWOG was bought by the Sunshine Wireless Company. The new owner changed its
call sign to WKQS-FM, and switched it to
easy listening as "Kiss-FM." The WWOG call letters were later transferred to a new non-commercial religious radio station at 88.1, owned by the Boca Raton Christian School. (That station is now
WAYF, owned by the
WAY-FM Network.) The format was switched to
country music in September 1981. In 1985 Sunshine Wireless bought
AM 560 WQAM. WQAM had been a long-time
Top 40 station but Sunshine switched it to country music. Sunshine now had an AM country station, with personality
DJs,
NBC News and local information, as well as WKQS, an FM country station, with less chatter and more current country hits. In 1988, WKQS changed call letters to WKIS. Around this time, WQAM would leave the country music format, first playing
oldies and then switching to
all-sports. This left WKIS as Miami's only country music outlet.
Ownership changes The
Beasley Broadcast Group bought both WKIS and WQAM in the late 1990s, but continued the country music and sports formats on each station. The studios and offices were moved to Sheridan Street in
Hollywood. On October 2, 2014, Beasley announced that it would trade five radio stations in
Philadelphia and Miami, including WKIS, to
CBS Radio, in exchange for 14 stations located in
Tampa,
Charlotte and Philadelphia. The swap was completed on December 1, 2014. On February 2, 2017, CBS Radio announced it would merge with
Entercom. The merger was approved on November 9, 2017, and was consummated on November 17. ==References==