WKU-FM 88.9

WKU Public Radio is the public radio service of Western Kentucky University, operating a network of four FM stations and one FM translator that collectively serve most of Western Kentucky along with portions of southern Indiana and northern Tennessee, including the outer suburbs of Nashville. The network's flagship station, WKYU-FM, signed on in November 1980 at 88.9 MHz as the first public radio outlet in south central Kentucky, a project led by Dr. Chuck Anderson following years of campus carrier-current experiments beginning in 1975. Early operations were not without difficulty; interference with lower-VHF television signals from Nashville prompted a brief class-action lawsuit from residents of Butler County in early 1981, though the case was dismissed by June of that year. Over the following decade, the network expanded by adding WDCL-FM for the Somerset and Campbellsville areas in 1985, then WKUE-FM in Elizabethtown and WKPB serving Henderson and Owensboro in 1990. Programming was centered on classical music for many years under the "Western's Public Radio" identity. On August 31, 2009, the network rebranded as WKU Public Radio and shifted its daytime schedule toward news and talk programming. The station is affiliated with NPR and carries both national and locally produced journalism covering Kentucky politics, public policy, and community affairs.