WKNO-FM
Encyclopedia
The WKNO FM Stations is a pair of public radio stations
based in Memphis, Tennessee
, that serve the "Mid-South" region with local fine arts and classical music programs, as well as news and information programs from the National Public Radio, Public Radio International
, and American Public Media
networks.
The stations are owned and operated by the Mid-South Public Communications Foundation, a non-profit organization governed by a board of trustees composed of volunteers. This board also operates Memphis' public television station, WKNO-TV.
Two stations comprise the network:
WKNO-FM 91.1--Memphis (flagship). Signal reaches about a 50-mile radius from the city, covering the southwestern corner of Tennessee
, eastern Arkansas
, and northwestern Mississippi
.
WKNP 90.1--Jackson, Tennessee
. Signal covers much of the state between the Memphis area, the Tennessee River
, and the Kentucky
state line.
); in 1979, along with the TV station, the studios were relocated a few blocks to the south, to the southern annex of MSU on Getwell Road. That facility served the television and radio stations for 30 years until November 2009, when they moved into custom-designed all-digital studios, located in the Memphis suburb of Cordova
.
As with many public radio outlets started during that era, programming in the early years consisted almost entirely of classical music; NPR news broadcasts did not become a significant portion of the daily schedule until well into the 1980s. Still, the station increased its power during that period to a full 100,000 watts, thereby increasing its listenership with a stronger, clearer signal. As the popularity of public radio developed, the MSPCF decided to aggressively construct and acquire transmitters throughout the region, much of which had never been served by public radio before. It started by purchasing the broadcasting equipment of WNJC-FM, the defunct campus radio
station (founded 1972) of Northwest Mississippi Community College
in Senatobia
, about 40 miles south of Memphis, in 1989. MSPCF kept that station's original callsign for a few years, before rechristening it to WKNA-FM, making it conform to the mother station's pattern. That station broadcast at 88.9 mHz.
Next, the board set its sights on Tennessee's largest city without any public radio service, Jackson, and started a repeater, WKNP, there in 1990. Finally, WKNO-FM solidified its coverage of West Tennessee with a repeater serving northwestern Tennessee and southeastern Missouri
, WKNQ, in 1993. Situated in the town of Dyersburg
, that station broadcast at 90.7 mHz.
For a few years, the stations broadcast identical programs, except for daytime coverage of Memphis city council meetings, which were heard only on the mother station, as they were, quite obviously, not pertinent to the rest of the territory. In some portions of the listening area, particularly that of WKNA-FM, competing stations such as Mississippi Public Broadcasting
duplicated some network offerings as well.
Eventually, however, with the great expansion of public radio news and talk programming in the late 1990s, MSPCF decided to take advantage of it by splitting the network into two. With that, the Memphis and Jackson stations programmed classical music during the middle of the day and at night, news during rush hour, and weekly feature programs on the weekends. Meanwhile, the Dyersburg and Senatobia frequencies carried news, talk, and information shows from various public radio packagers and the BBC. On occasion, the four stations aired the same programming.
-based American Family Association
bought the broadcast license of WKNA, and the Rocklin, California
-based Educational Media Foundation
acquired the WKNQ frequency (even though it already owns two frequencies near Dyersburg). WKNO/MSPCF gave no official reason for the decision to liquidate two of its frequencies, though MSPCF president Michael LaBonia said that MSPCF had no luck expanding the stations' coverage area. For example, he claimed he could not hear WKNA even on his car radio, despite the transmitter being located only 40 miles south of Memphis. While WKNA's signal could be heard fairly well in car radios by listeners driving around Memphis (particularly in the Mississippi portion of the metropolitan area), it only provided grade B service to Memphis itself. The sale left the northwestern corner of Tennessee as one of the few areas in the country without a clear signal from an NPR station, the closest signal being Murray, Kentucky
's WKMS. It also removed BBC
news programming and NPR daytime talk programing from more than one million potential listeners, and left the Memphis area without any talk programming on the FM dial (except for the relatively few listeners who use satellite or HD radios).
The sale reflected a trend, disturbing to some public broadcasting advocates, of religious networks assuming control of a high percentage of frequencies on the reserved non-commercial portion of the FM band (87.7-91.9 mHz) in many U.S. markets, most pronounced in non-metropolitan areas of the Southern U.S. Further, it bucked a previous trend toward multiple public radio services offered to one market or region (contrasted with, for example, New York City
's WNYC-FM or Nashville
's WPLN-FM
). In making the decision to sell, MSPCF probably took into account the predominantly-rural, lesser-income, lesser-educated, and highly religious demographics of the populations WKNA and WKNQ served—the complete opposites of those public radio stations usually target (generally, metropolitan residents with above-average incomes, college educations, and of a culturally tolerant, secular bent). In terms of the WKNO radio stations' business operations, since relatively few listeners resided in those areas, the stations received very few financial contributions from northwestern Tennessee or northern Mississippi. A leveling off of NPR's popularity (from a peak in the early 2000s) and a general decline in governmental and corporate support for public broadcasting were likely factors as well.
According to the Memphis Flyer
, MSPCF netted some $2.8 million from the transaction with the religious networks .
After the sale, WKNO/WKNP reconfigured its schedule into a combination more typical among NPR stations across the country. The new lineup features NPR
newscasts throughout the day; NPR
news magazines, such as All Things Considered
and Morning Edition
in morning and afternoon drive-time slots; Marketplace
from American Public Media in the late afternoons; Fresh Air
in the early evening; feature (local) programming during the daytime on weekends, as well as the Metropolitan Opera broadcasts, and comedy shows from NPR, APM, and PRI; and classical music at other times.
In late 2007, WKNO/WKNP began broadcasting digitally, so listeners with an HD radio are presently able to receive three streams from WKNO. The first stream is a simulcast of the analog signal. A second stream alternates between NPR and American Public Media
shows when classical music is broadcast on the first stream, and classical music when the first stream broadcasts NPR, PRI and APM spoken-word programming. The third stream offers 24/7 news from the BBC World Service
, something previously available on WKNA and WKNQ.
Radio station
Radio broadcasting is a one-way wireless transmission over radio waves intended to reach a wide audience. Stations can be linked in radio networks to broadcast a common radio format, either in broadcast syndication or simulcast or both...
based in Memphis, Tennessee
Memphis, Tennessee
Memphis is a city in the southwestern corner of the U.S. state of Tennessee, and the county seat of Shelby County. The city is located on the 4th Chickasaw Bluff, south of the confluence of the Wolf and Mississippi rivers....
, that serve the "Mid-South" region with local fine arts and classical music programs, as well as news and information programs from the National Public Radio, Public Radio International
Public Radio International
Public Radio International is a Minneapolis-based American public radio organization, with locations in Boston, New York, London and Beijing. PRI's tagline is "Hear a different voice." PRI is a major public media content creator and also distributes programs from many sources...
, and American Public Media
American Public Media
American Public Media is the second largest producer of public radio programs in the United States of America after NPR. Its non-profit parent, American Public Media Group, also owns and operates radio stations in Minnesota, California, and Florida. Its station brands are Minnesota Public Radio,...
networks.
The stations are owned and operated by the Mid-South Public Communications Foundation, a non-profit organization governed by a board of trustees composed of volunteers. This board also operates Memphis' public television station, WKNO-TV.
Two stations comprise the network:
WKNO-FM 91.1--Memphis (flagship). Signal reaches about a 50-mile radius from the city, covering the southwestern corner of Tennessee
Tennessee
Tennessee is a U.S. state located in the Southeastern United States. It has a population of 6,346,105, making it the nation's 17th-largest state by population, and covers , making it the 36th-largest by total land area...
, eastern Arkansas
Arkansas
Arkansas is a state located in the southern region of the United States. Its name is an Algonquian name of the Quapaw Indians. Arkansas shares borders with six states , and its eastern border is largely defined by the Mississippi River...
, and northwestern Mississippi
Mississippi
Mississippi is a U.S. state located in the Southern United States. Jackson is the state capital and largest city. The name of the state derives from the Mississippi River, which flows along its western boundary, whose name comes from the Ojibwe word misi-ziibi...
.
WKNP 90.1--Jackson, Tennessee
Jackson, Tennessee
Jackson is a city in Madison County, Tennessee, United States. The total population was 65,211 at the 2010 census. Jackson is the primary city of the Jackson, Tennessee metropolitan area, which is included in the Jackson-Humboldt, Tennessee Combined Statistical Area...
. Signal covers much of the state between the Memphis area, the Tennessee River
Tennessee River
The Tennessee River is the largest tributary of the Ohio River. It is approximately 652 miles long and is located in the southeastern United States in the Tennessee Valley. The river was once popularly known as the Cherokee River, among other names...
, and the Kentucky
Kentucky
The Commonwealth of Kentucky is a state located in the East Central United States of America. As classified by the United States Census Bureau, Kentucky is a Southern state, more specifically in the East South Central region. Kentucky is one of four U.S. states constituted as a commonwealth...
state line.
History
WKNO-FM began operations in 1972, with only the one station broadcasting at 40,000 watts. Its studios were first located on the main campus of Memphis State University (now University of MemphisUniversity of Memphis
The University of Memphis is an American public research university located in the Normal Station neighborhood of Memphis, Tennessee and is the flagship public research university of the Tennessee Board of Regents system....
); in 1979, along with the TV station, the studios were relocated a few blocks to the south, to the southern annex of MSU on Getwell Road. That facility served the television and radio stations for 30 years until November 2009, when they moved into custom-designed all-digital studios, located in the Memphis suburb of Cordova
Cordova, Tennessee
Cordova is a community in Shelby County, Tennessee, United States. Cordova lies on Memphis' northeast side, north of Germantown, and northwest of Collierville....
.
As with many public radio outlets started during that era, programming in the early years consisted almost entirely of classical music; NPR news broadcasts did not become a significant portion of the daily schedule until well into the 1980s. Still, the station increased its power during that period to a full 100,000 watts, thereby increasing its listenership with a stronger, clearer signal. As the popularity of public radio developed, the MSPCF decided to aggressively construct and acquire transmitters throughout the region, much of which had never been served by public radio before. It started by purchasing the broadcasting equipment of WNJC-FM, the defunct campus radio
Campus radio
Campus radio is a type of radio station that is run by the students of a college, university or other educational institution. Programming may be exclusively by students, or may include programmers from the wider community in which the radio station is based...
station (founded 1972) of Northwest Mississippi Community College
Northwest Mississippi Community College
Northwest Mississippi Community College is a two-year public community college located in Senatobia, Mississippi, USA and has been in existence since 1928. As of August 2008, Northwest's enrollment exceeds 7,100 students. There are approximately 3,000 students on the Senatobia campus—1,100 of which...
in Senatobia
Senatobia, Mississippi
Senatobia is a city in and the county seat of Tate County, Mississippi, United States, and is the 15th largest municipality in the Memphis Metropolitan Area. The population was 8,165 at the 2010 census....
, about 40 miles south of Memphis, in 1989. MSPCF kept that station's original callsign for a few years, before rechristening it to WKNA-FM, making it conform to the mother station's pattern. That station broadcast at 88.9 mHz.
Next, the board set its sights on Tennessee's largest city without any public radio service, Jackson, and started a repeater, WKNP, there in 1990. Finally, WKNO-FM solidified its coverage of West Tennessee with a repeater serving northwestern Tennessee and southeastern Missouri
Missouri
Missouri is a US state located in the Midwestern United States, bordered by Iowa, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska. With a 2010 population of 5,988,927, Missouri is the 18th most populous state in the nation and the fifth most populous in the Midwest. It...
, WKNQ, in 1993. Situated in the town of Dyersburg
Dyersburg, Tennessee
Dyersburg is a city in and the county seat of Dyer County, Tennessee, United States, north-northeast of Memphis on the Forked Deer River. The population was 17,145 at the 2010 census.-Geography:Dyersburg is located at...
, that station broadcast at 90.7 mHz.
For a few years, the stations broadcast identical programs, except for daytime coverage of Memphis city council meetings, which were heard only on the mother station, as they were, quite obviously, not pertinent to the rest of the territory. In some portions of the listening area, particularly that of WKNA-FM, competing stations such as Mississippi Public Broadcasting
Mississippi Public Broadcasting
Mississippi Public Broadcasting is the public broadcasting state network in Mississippi, United States. It is owned by the Mississippi Authority for Educational Television, an agency of the Mississippi state government that holds the licenses for all of the PBS and NPR member stations in the...
duplicated some network offerings as well.
Eventually, however, with the great expansion of public radio news and talk programming in the late 1990s, MSPCF decided to take advantage of it by splitting the network into two. With that, the Memphis and Jackson stations programmed classical music during the middle of the day and at night, news during rush hour, and weekly feature programs on the weekends. Meanwhile, the Dyersburg and Senatobia frequencies carried news, talk, and information shows from various public radio packagers and the BBC. On occasion, the four stations aired the same programming.
2007 translator sale
However, in early 2007, WKNO/MSPCF sold its alternate signals in Senatobia and Dyersburg, WKNA and WKNQ, to evangelical Christian broadcasters. The Tupelo, MississippiTupelo, Mississippi
Tupelo is the largest city in and the county seat of Lee County, Mississippi, United States. It is the seventh largest city in the state of Mississippi, smaller than Meridian, and larger than Greenville. As of the 2000 United States Census, the city's population was 34,211...
-based American Family Association
American Family Association
The American Family Association is a 501 non-profit organization that promotes conservative Christian values, such as opposition to same-sex marriage, pornography, and abortion, as well as other public policy goals such as deregulation of the oil industry and lobbying against the Employee Free...
bought the broadcast license of WKNA, and the Rocklin, California
Rocklin, California
Rocklin is a city in Placer County, California located in the metropolitan area of Sacramento. It shares borders with Roseville, Loomis, and Lincoln...
-based Educational Media Foundation
Educational Media Foundation
Educational Media Foundation is a not-for-profit organization that operates the K-LOVE and Air 1 radio networks. EMF is based in Rocklin, California....
acquired the WKNQ frequency (even though it already owns two frequencies near Dyersburg). WKNO/MSPCF gave no official reason for the decision to liquidate two of its frequencies, though MSPCF president Michael LaBonia said that MSPCF had no luck expanding the stations' coverage area. For example, he claimed he could not hear WKNA even on his car radio, despite the transmitter being located only 40 miles south of Memphis. While WKNA's signal could be heard fairly well in car radios by listeners driving around Memphis (particularly in the Mississippi portion of the metropolitan area), it only provided grade B service to Memphis itself. The sale left the northwestern corner of Tennessee as one of the few areas in the country without a clear signal from an NPR station, the closest signal being Murray, Kentucky
Murray, Kentucky
Murray is a city in Calloway County, Kentucky, United States. The population was 17,741 at the 2010 census and has a micropolitan area population of 37,191. It is the 22nd largest city in Kentucky...
's WKMS. It also removed BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
news programming and NPR daytime talk programing from more than one million potential listeners, and left the Memphis area without any talk programming on the FM dial (except for the relatively few listeners who use satellite or HD radios).
The sale reflected a trend, disturbing to some public broadcasting advocates, of religious networks assuming control of a high percentage of frequencies on the reserved non-commercial portion of the FM band (87.7-91.9 mHz) in many U.S. markets, most pronounced in non-metropolitan areas of the Southern U.S. Further, it bucked a previous trend toward multiple public radio services offered to one market or region (contrasted with, for example, New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
's WNYC-FM or Nashville
Nashville, Tennessee
Nashville is the capital of the U.S. state of Tennessee and the county seat of Davidson County. It is located on the Cumberland River in Davidson County, in the north-central part of the state. The city is a center for the health care, publishing, banking and transportation industries, and is home...
's WPLN-FM
WPLN-FM
WPLN-FM , is a National Public Radio-affiliated station in Nashville, Tennessee. Since June 2011, the station has employed exclusively a news and talk format; up until then, the station carried at least some classical music...
). In making the decision to sell, MSPCF probably took into account the predominantly-rural, lesser-income, lesser-educated, and highly religious demographics of the populations WKNA and WKNQ served—the complete opposites of those public radio stations usually target (generally, metropolitan residents with above-average incomes, college educations, and of a culturally tolerant, secular bent). In terms of the WKNO radio stations' business operations, since relatively few listeners resided in those areas, the stations received very few financial contributions from northwestern Tennessee or northern Mississippi. A leveling off of NPR's popularity (from a peak in the early 2000s) and a general decline in governmental and corporate support for public broadcasting were likely factors as well.
According to the Memphis Flyer
Memphis Flyer
The Memphis Flyer is a free weekly alternative newspaper serving the greater Memphis, Tennessee area. Liberal in its politics, the Flyer covers local politics, as well as music and entertainment, regional sports, and human interest stories. Circulation: 55,000The Flyer was founded in 1989 by...
, MSPCF netted some $2.8 million from the transaction with the religious networks .
After the sale, WKNO/WKNP reconfigured its schedule into a combination more typical among NPR stations across the country. The new lineup features NPR
NPR
NPR, formerly National Public Radio, is a privately and publicly funded non-profit membership media organization that serves as a national syndicator to a network of 900 public radio stations in the United States. NPR was created in 1970, following congressional passage of the Public Broadcasting...
newscasts throughout the day; NPR
NPR
NPR, formerly National Public Radio, is a privately and publicly funded non-profit membership media organization that serves as a national syndicator to a network of 900 public radio stations in the United States. NPR was created in 1970, following congressional passage of the Public Broadcasting...
news magazines, such as All Things Considered
All Things Considered
All Things Considered is the flagship news program on the American network National Public Radio. It was the first news program on NPR, and is broadcast live worldwide through several outlets...
and Morning Edition
Morning Edition
Morning Edition is an American radio news program produced and distributed by National Public Radio . It airs weekday mornings and runs for two hours, and many stations repeat one or both hours. The show feeds live from 05:00 to 09:00 ET, with feeds and updates as required until noon...
in morning and afternoon drive-time slots; Marketplace
Marketplace
A marketplace is the space, actual, virtual or metaphorical, in which a market operates. The term is also used in a trademark law context to denote the actual consumer environment, ie. the 'real world' in which products and services are provided and consumed.-Marketplaces and street markets:A...
from American Public Media in the late afternoons; Fresh Air
Fresh Air
Fresh Air is an American radio talk show broadcast on National Public Radio stations across the United States. The show is produced by WHYY-FM in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Its longtime host is Terry Gross. , the show was syndicated to 450 stations and claimed 4.5 million listeners. The show...
in the early evening; feature (local) programming during the daytime on weekends, as well as the Metropolitan Opera broadcasts, and comedy shows from NPR, APM, and PRI; and classical music at other times.
In late 2007, WKNO/WKNP began broadcasting digitally, so listeners with an HD radio are presently able to receive three streams from WKNO. The first stream is a simulcast of the analog signal. A second stream alternates between NPR and American Public Media
American Public Media
American Public Media is the second largest producer of public radio programs in the United States of America after NPR. Its non-profit parent, American Public Media Group, also owns and operates radio stations in Minnesota, California, and Florida. Its station brands are Minnesota Public Radio,...
shows when classical music is broadcast on the first stream, and classical music when the first stream broadcasts NPR, PRI and APM spoken-word programming. The third stream offers 24/7 news from the BBC World Service
BBC World Service
The BBC World Service is the world's largest international broadcaster, broadcasting in 27 languages to many parts of the world via analogue and digital shortwave, internet streaming and podcasting, satellite, FM and MW relays...
, something previously available on WKNA and WKNQ.