KDWB

KDWB (101.3 FM) is a radio station in the Twin Cities region of Minnesota, known for more than 40 years as a major music outlet. KDWB may be the first station to have been fined by the Federal Communications Commission. They apparently had to pay $10,000 because of repeated willful violations of nighttime broadcast power restrictions when it was broadcasting on the AM band. Today, the station is owned by Clear Channel Communications.

The station started off as a collaboration between three brothers who named it WCOW ("WPIG" or "KPIG" was apparently rejected), which was an odd station playing country and old-time music when it first went on the air in 1951 at 1530 kHz. Vic, Nick, and Al Tedesco, who had previously put together a station in Stillwater, Minnesota, attempted to get into television on channel 17 the next year, but financial backing fell through. The channel 17 allocation was taken by Twin Cities Public Television in 1965. In the early days, WCOW signed on with a cowbell.

WCOW was not very successful, so the station transitioned to being a female-oriented station with the call sign WISK in 1957, and the frequency was changed to 630 kHz the next year. Again, the format was not popular, and the station was soon bought out by Crowell-Collier Broadcasting Company, who owned KFWB and KEWB in California. The top 40 format of those stations was brought to Minnesota, and the KDWB call sign came into use in 1959. It quickly became a major competitor to WDGY, which had been playing a pop music format for a few years by that point. With the 630 kHz frequency, KDWB called itself "Channel 63."

KDWB was fined in the early 1960s for transmission violations, and a fire at the station knocked it off the air for a few days later that decade.

In parallel to KDWB, a station known as WYOO ("Super U100") eventually developed. That station had started off as a vaguely Christian station, WPBC 980 AM ("The People's Broadcasting Company"), which started broadcasting in 1949. Playing music that would have appealed to the Lawrence Welk crowd, they rejected advertising from beer and tobacco companies. Word has it that a co-owner, Becky Ann Stewart, would inspect all albums in their library and use the sharp end of a compass to scratch away the grooves of tracks that didn't meet her standards of "nice" music, in order to prevent rebellious DJ's from playing them. In addition to the AM station, they started simulcasting on FM at 101.3 MHz in the 1960s. The owners, Bill and Becky Ann Stewart, sold the station in 1972 to Fairchild Industries, which created another pop music competitor. The AM station changed to WYOO, and the FM signal was WRAH for two years in an adult contemporary format of the day. WYOO AM played more popular tracks, and the FM station began simulcasting that signal in 1974 while being rechristened WYOO-FM.

The AM dial in the Twin Cities became crowded with rock stations, with WDGY, KDWB, WYOO, and latecomer KSTP all stepping in to take a piece of the pie. However, this was shortlived, as stations soon began jumping over to the FM dial. KDWB, owned by Doubleday Broadcasting at this point, stepped in to buy WYOO-FM in 1976. WAYL 93.7 FM made a move for WYOO's AM signal. U100 signed off for the last time at midnight on September 15. KDWB-FM signed on for the first time at 6 AM the next day.

The old WDGY transitioned to a country music format in 1977 and eventually became known as KFAN. Strangely, the WDGY call letters have been resurrected a few times since then, most recently as KDWB's old 630 AM frequency.

External links

• KDWB

References

• (December 6, 2002). Radio station founder Al Tedesco dies. Associated Press.
• Station histories. Oldiesloon.
• (2003). U100. Studio Z-7 Publishing.
• Barry Mishkind (February 28, 2004). Broadcast History FAQ. The Broadcast Archive.