Category: Tennessee

“The Smokies Oldies – WLIK” was the surprise jingle heard one morning on 1270 kHz at Lista in January.  WLIK is not at all a common guest, but the station is logged in Scandinavia from time to time. I must admit I had not even heard of this station before checking some of my recordings last month.

Angela Wilkerson, Vice President of Operations, confirmed my not-so-perfect audio recording of WLIK with a friendly e-mail. She tells the station has been a family owned radio station since her grandfather started the station back in 1954. Angela also says the station has got a couple of reports from Norway, one from Finland and one from Belgium in the last few years.

WLIK is an oldies station playing hits from the 50’s, 60’s, 70’s and 80’s. The station is licenced to Newton in Eastern Tennessee, with a night time power of just 500 watts.

WSM makes it to Lista quite regularly on 650 kHz. Its signal is often heard below dominant station CKGA in Newfoundland. Both stations plays country music, but with a different flavour. I definitely prefer the country format of WSM to that of CKGA. Reception of WSM was pretty good at times at Lista in January 2011. I sent an e-mail report to Robin Roberts Ladisa at WSM who replied with a postal reply containing a really nice “Aircastle of the South”  QSL folder card, a sticker, a refrigerator magnet, a station brochure and a WSM guitar pick(!). This was the 3rd time Robin tried to send me a QSL. The first 2 letters he sent to me was apparently lost in the mail somewhere between Tennessee and Norway. Kudos to Robin for not giving up!

WSM operates a 50 kilowatt transmitter located in Brentwood south of Nashville. WSM unusual diamond shaped antenna is a landmark, in fact there is only one tower in the United States with the same design (the other tower is operated by WLW in Cincinnati on 700 kHz). The radio tower for WSM has also been added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places. There are many pictures of this tower on the web and this page over at oldradio.com tells the history of this transmitter

In addition to operating a historic transmitter, WSM also airs the world’s longest running radio program The Grand Old Opry which begun as early as in 1925.

The only station from Tennessee which can be said to be heard fairly regularly in Southern Norway, is WLAC in Nashville on 1510 kHz. For my part, however, I hadn’t had any luck hearing WLAC untill the October 2008 DX-pedition to Lista. On this DX-pedition, their signal was heard well for several hours mixing with WWZN in Boston. The main challenge in hearing WLAC – which has a power of 50 kilowatts – is getting past WWZN which usually has a powerhouse signal here.

Program Director Tom Peace verified my reception with a kind e-mail. He also enclosed this very cool QSL certificate, which must be a replica of a certificate they used many years ago. Note that WLAC is the station of the “Life & Casualty Insurance Company”. Obviously, that ownership has changed now, but the call sign of the station W–Life-And-Casualty has been kept and points back to the early pioneer days of radio