WBFM (93.7 FM) is a

country music Country (also called country and western) is a popular music, music genre originating in the southern regions of the United States, both the American South and American southwest, the Southwest. First produced in the 1920s, country music is p ...

station Station may refer to: Agriculture * Station (Australian agriculture), a large Australian landholding used for livestock production * Station (New Zealand agriculture), a large New Zealand farm used for grazing by sheep and cattle ** Cattle statio ...

licensed to

Sheboygan, Wisconsin Sheboygan () is a city in Sheboygan County, Wisconsin, United States, and its county seat. The population was 49,929 at the 2020 census. It is the principal city of the Sheboygan Metropolitan statistical area, metropolitan area, which has a pop ...

. WBFM is owned and operated by

Midwest Communications Midwest Communications, Inc. is a Wausau, Wisconsin–based radio broadcasting company. It owns 82 radio stations located primarily within the Midwest United States, in Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Tennessee, Il ...

under the sub-branding of ''Sheboygan Radio Group'', which owns seven radio stations in Northeast

Wisconsin Wisconsin ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest of the United States. It borders Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake Michigan to the east, Michig ...

and three other radio stations in the Sheboygan market. It shares studios with WHBL,

WXER WXER is a Hot AC FM radio station broadcasting on 104.5 MHz in Sheboygan County, Wisconsin, which is owned by Midwest Communications. The station is licensed to the city of Plymouth and broadcasts from a tower southwest of the city. The s ...

, and

WHBZ WHBZ (106.5 FM, "The Buzz") is a Sheboygan Falls, Wisconsin- licensed radio station based in Sheboygan that plays a mainstream rock format. The station is currently owned by Midwest Communications and features an all-local lineup, with Fox Ne ...

on Washington Avenue in Sheboygan, with the station's transmitter and antenna based behind the studios.

History

The station was created as the second iteration of heritage station WHBL's FM sister WWJR in 1993 as part of a large frequency swap in northeastern Wisconsin that also involved WKTT moving from 103.1 to 98.1, and WWJR from 97.7 to the new 93.7 frequency to facilitate the creation of Kaukauna-licensed WOGB on 103.1. For the first four years of 93.7's history as WWJR, it carried a basic

adult contemporary Adult contemporary music (AC) is a form of radio-played popular music, ranging from 1960s vocal and 1970s soft rock music to predominantly ballad-heavy music of the 1980s to the present day, with varying degrees of easy listening, pop, soul ...

format. In early 1997, the Walton family, the longtime owners of WHBL and WWJR, acquired the license for a new station licensed to Sheboygan Falls at 106.5, which would transmit, like WHBL and WWJR, from their Washington Avenue three-

tower array A tower array is an arrangement of multiple radio towers which are mast radiators in a phased array. They were originally developed as ground-based tracking radars. Tower arrays can consist of free-standing or guyed towers or a mix of them. Tower ...

site on Sheboygan's south side. The Waltons determined that Sheboygan County was underserved by the lack of a locally based country music station, and at that time country listenership in the area was mainly split several ways in all areas of the county among WKTT and

WCUB WCUB (980 kHz) is a commercial AM radio station licensed to Two Rivers, Wisconsin. The station is owned by Mark Seehafer, through licensee Seehafer Broadcasting Corporation, with studios at Mangin Street in Manitowoc. It airs a classic coun ...

to the north from Manitowoc County, West Bend's WBWI-FM, and

WMIL-FM WMIL-FM (106.1 MHz) is a commercial radio station licensed to Waukesha, Wisconsin, and serving the Greater Milwaukee and Southeast Wisconsin radio market. It carries a country music radio format and is owned by iHeartMedia, Inc. The studio ...

from Waukesha-Milwaukee to the south. On April 7, 1997, another frequency swap took place with the launch of 106.5. WWJR's format and calls were moved to 106.5, with 93.7 becoming a new radio country station, "B-93", taking the calls WBFM and mainly airing live programming during the day and voicetracked programming in the overnight hours. Officially, WBFM holds the FCC

facility ID The facility ID number, also called a FIN or facility identifier, is a unique integer number of one to six digits, assigned by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Media Bureau to each broadcast station in the FCC Consolidated Databas ...

which originated with WWJR's original 97.7 facility in 1972. WWJR would switch to an

active rock Active rock is a radio format used by many commercial radio stations across the United States and Canada. Active rock stations play a balance of new hard rock songs with valued classic rock favorites, normally with an emphasis on the harder edge o ...

format at the end of 2000 as "The Buzz" under the calls WHBZ, while WKTT would end up converting to adult contemporary as WLKN in 2003 as WBFM's stronger signal in Manitowoc reduced the ratings for WKTT after their launch and to fill the AC hole left by WWJR's demise. Besides the purchase of the Walton stations by

in 2000, the addition of some voicetracked shifts from Midwest stations in Green Bay and Wausau, along with a current weather forecasting agreement with

WLUK-TV WLUK-TV (channel 11) is a television station in Green Bay, Wisconsin, United States, affiliated with the Fox network. It is owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group alongside Suring-licensed CW affiliate WCWF (channel 14). The two stations share s ...

in Green Bay, WBFM has remained relatively unchanged in format since April 1997. A minor change of branding with the decimal number was added in mid-2007 to avert any confusion with Milwaukee's

WLDB WLDB (93.3 FM broadcasting, FM "B93.3 FM") is a commercial radio, commercial radio station in Milwaukee, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It is owned and operated by the Milwaukee Radio Alliance, a partnership between Times-Shamrock Communications and Wi ...

(93.3), itself known as "B93.3".

External links

WBFM official website
{{Sheboygan Radio BFM Country radio stations in the United States Radio stations established in 1993 1993 establishments in Wisconsin Midwest Communications radio stations