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WKOS

Radio station in Kingsport, Tennessee, United States

Image credit is listed at the end of this article.

WKOS (104.9 FM), branded as "104.9 Nash Icon", is a radio station serving the Tri-Cities, Tennessee, area with country music. This station is under ownership of Cumulus Media.

01History

WGAT-FM began broadcasting on January 21, 1970, as the FM sister station of WGAT AM. It changed calls to WZXY on October 14, 1981, and changed to its current callsign on July 1, 1991. In the early 1980s, WGAT-FM became WZXY, an album-oriented rock station branded "Y105". Sometime in the mid- to late-1980s, WZXY changed its to CHR/Top 40. Through much of the 1990s and a large part of the 2000s, the format was oldies under its new callsign WKOS, and then adult hits. The station was called "The Peak" when it changed to hot adult contemporary.

On February 24, 2012, WKOS changed formats to country, branded as "Great Country 104.9". On July 3, 2013, at 3:00 p.m. EDT, WKOS re-branded itself as "Nash FM 104.9". On April 24, 2015, WKOS rebranded as "104.9 Nash Icon".

WKOS's logo under previous "Nash FM" branding
WKOS's logo under previous "Nash FM" branding

02Sports coverage

In 2007, the East Tennessee State University men's basketball Team moved its games from WJCW to WKOS. This marked the first time the team was heard on FM radio. This has since been moved to AM 640 WXSM, a sister station.

03Pirate radio station "WKOS" in Maine

In 1967, the phone hacker Captain Crunch created a radio station called WKOS [W-"chaos"], a pirate station in Dover-Foxcroft, Maine, but had to shut it down when a licensed radio station, WDME, objected.

Watch videos about WKOSExplainers and documentaries on YouTube (opens in a new tab)

Sources and credits

This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article WKOS, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.

Images, from Wikimedia Commons:

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