WCKY (AM)

WCKY

Cincinnati, Ohio
Broadcast area	Cincinnati metropolitan area
Frequency	1530 kHz
Branding	Cincinnati's ESPN 1530
Programming
Format	Sports radio
Affiliations	ESPN Radio Cincinnati Bengals Radio Network FC Cincinnati UK Sports Network U of L Sports Network Westwood One
Ownership
Owner	iHeartMedia (iHM Licenses, LLC)
Sister stations	WEBN, WKFS, WKRC, WLW, WSAI
History
First air date	September 16, 1929; 94 years ago (1929-09-16)
Former call signs	WCKY (1929–1994) WSAI (1994–2005)
Call sign meaning	Originally licensed to Covington, Kentucky
Technical information[1]
Licensing authority	FCC
Facility ID	51722
Class	A
Power	50,000 watts
Transmitter coordinates	39°3′55″N 84°36′27″W / 39.06528°N 84.60750°W / 39.06528; -84.60750
Links
Public license information	Public file LMS
Webcast	Listen live (via iHeartRadio)
Website	espn1530.iheart.com

WCKY (1530 kHz) – branded "Cincinnati's ESPN 1530" – is a commercial sports AM radio station licensed to Cincinnati, Ohio, serving the Cincinnati metropolitan area. Owned by iHeartMedia, its studios are located in the Kenwood section of Sycamore Township (with a Cincinnati address), while its transmitter site is a four-tower facility in suburban Villa Hills, Kentucky. In addition to a standard analog transmission, WCKY is available online via iHeartRadio.

WCKY is a class A clear channel station, sharing the frequency with co-owned station KFBK in Sacramento. WCKY's daytime coverage is not nearly as large as that of other 50,000-watt stations, in part because of the reduced groundwave characteristic of its fairly high transmitting frequency. Its daytime city-grade signal only covers the Tri-State Area and the outer suburbs of Dayton. By comparison, WLW, aided by the superior groundwave of its much lower frequency of 700 kHz, can be heard at city-grade strength in large portions of Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky. However, WCKY's daytime signal provides at least secondary coverage to most of southwestern Ohio (including Dayton), central Kentucky (including Lexington and the outer suburbs of Louisville) and eastern Indiana (as far as the outer suburbs of Indianapolis).

WCKY has a long history of a powerful night-time signal, and its country music programming of the 1950s and 1960s brought listener responses from many points even outside the United States. It can still be heard in much of eastern and central North America with a good radio; it can be picked up as far as Chicago, Detroit, Wichita, and Miami. Nighttime power is fed to all four of its towers in a directional pattern, concentrating the signal in the Cincinnati and Dayton areas, while the Indiana side of the market only gets a grade B signal at night. WCKY and KFBK mutually limit interference with each other; however, as Class A stations, both receive more protection than other stations on this frequency. For this reason, WCKY does not have to change to its directional signal until three hours past local sunset. The only station it is required to protect is KFBK, and Sacramento is on Pacific Time, making sunset there three hours later than in Cincinnati, so WCKY's signal will not travel toward KFBK until after dark.^[2]