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WNKI (106.1 FM, "Wink 106") is a
radio station Radio broadcasting is the broadcasting of audio (sound), sometimes with related metadata, by radio waves to radio receivers belonging to a public audience. In terrestrial radio broadcasting the radio waves are broadcast by a land-based rad ...
broadcasting a Top 40 (CHR) format. Licensed to
Corning, New York Corning is a city in Steuben County, New York, United States, on the Chemung River. The population was 10,551 at the 2020 census. It is named for Erastus Corning, an Albany financier and railroad executive who was an investor in the company th ...
, United States, the station serves the Elmira-Corning area, and is the
Nielsen Audio Nielsen Audio (formerly Arbitron) is a consumer research company in the United States that collects listener data on radio broadcasting audiences. It was founded as the American Research Bureau by Jim Seiler in 1949 and became national by mergin ...
#1 rated station in the market. The station is currently owned by Seven Mountains Media, which closed on its $3.9 million acquisition of the station April 1, 2019, from
Community Broadcasters, LLC Community Broadcasters, LLC is a Watertown, New York based radio holding group that owns radio stations in its own market and surrounding areas. It was founded by media executives Bruce Mittman and Jim Leven, and started out in 2006 by buying st ...
.


History

The station went on the air as WKNP in 1947, under the ownership of the
Corning Leader ''The Leader'' is an American daily newspaper published in Corning, New York. It is owned by Gannett. The newspaper covers the city of Corning and surrounding villages such as Addison, Bath and Erwin, in Steuben County, and Horseheads, in C ...
newspaper. Its original frequency was 95.1 FM. By 1950, it had moved to another frequency, the current 106.1 FM. A sister AM station,
WCLI WCLI-FM (101.5 FM broadcasting, FM, "Hank FM") is a classic country radio station, licensed to Enon, Ohio, and serving the Dayton, Ohio, Dayton area. The station is owned by Alpha Media. Its studios are located in Kettering, Ohio (with a Dayton ...
, signed on in 1947. It had broadcast from a building at Erie Avenue (now Dennison Parkway) and Walnut Street in Corning. The
Erie Railroad The Erie Railroad was a railroad that operated in the Northeastern United States, originally connecting Pavonia Terminal in Jersey City, New Jersey, with Lake Erie at Dunkirk, New York. The railroad expanded west to Chicago following its 1865 ...
mainline passed nearby, and passing freight and passenger trains used to shake the building along with the recorded music on the turntables, according to Leader columnist Dick Peer.
Disc jockey A disc jockey, more commonly abbreviated as DJ, is a person who plays recorded music for an audience. Types of DJs include Radio personality, radio DJs (who host programs on music radio stations), club DJs (who work at nightclubs or music fes ...
Bob Shaddock, who became one of the market's iconic radio personalities, developed a skill of picking up the needle from the
78 RPM A phonograph record (also known as a gramophone record, especially in British English) or a vinyl record (for later varieties only) is an analog sound storage medium in the form of a flat disc with an inscribed, modulated spiral groove. The g ...
records and making announcements while trains passed, according to Peer. The newspaper sold the stations in 1953 to Radio Corning Inc. owned by Gordon Jenkins. WCLI duplicated much of the programming of 1450 WCLI. In May 1979, Jack King purchased Radio Corning Inc. and on October 20, 1980, the station changed its
call sign In broadcasting and radio communications, a call sign (also known as a call name or call letters—and historically as a call signal—or abbreviated as a call) is a unique identifier for a transmitter station. A call sign can be formally as ...
to WZKZ. Known as KZ-106, the station played a live-assist
automated Automation describes a wide range of technologies that reduce human intervention in processes, mainly by predetermining decision criteria, subprocess relationships, and related actions, as well as embodying those predeterminations in machine ...
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 Format may refer to: Printing and visual media * Text formatting, the typesetting of text elements * Paper formats, or paper size standards * Newspaper format, the size of the paper page Computing * File format, particular way that informatio ...
. It was the top-rated station in the Elmira-Corning market for much of the decade. In 1993, Pro Radio Inc. bought the stations. The FM call letters were switched on Oct. 8, 1993, to the current WNKI The change was controversial in that several popular personalities were let go as Pro Radio launched a
top 40 In the music industry, the Top 40 is a list of the 40 currently most popular songs in a particular genre. It is the best-selling or most frequently broadcast popular music. Record charts have traditionally consisted of a total of 40 songs. "To ...
format under the name of Wink 106 with a staff of air personalities, who were popular on other stations in the market. The change made some unwanted headlines when a presumably irate listener entered the main office (then at 99 W. First St.) after hours and doused it with fox urine. The KZ brand, WZKZ call sign and country format would move west to
Alfred, New York Alfred is a Administrative divisions of New York#Town, town in Allegany County, New York, Allegany County, New York (state), New York, United States. The population was 4,896 at the 2020 census. The Town of Alfred has a Administrative divisions ...
, where it would remain from 1999 to 2021.Site of the Week 7/9/2021: Wellsville and Alfred, NY
Retrieved July 9, 2021. In 1995, Pro Radio sold to Corning Sabrecom (part of Sabre Communications) for $1.85 Million which moved the stations to Elmira Heights. In 1997, the AM and FM split, with Sabre Communications selling WCLI to Eolin Broadcasting, which also owned WCBA, WCBA-FM, and WGMM. On May 6, 2013, it was announced that Backyard Broadcasting was selling the Elmira/Corning and Olean, NY clusters, including WNKI/WPGI/WNGZ/WRCE/WWLZ, to Community Broadcasters, LLC in Watertown, New York. The sale was consummated on August 26, 2013 at a price of $3.6 million. According to Radio + Television Business Report at RBR.com, Seven Mountains Media acquired WNKI in January 2019.


References


External links

* {{Seven Mountains Media
NKI NKI can refer to: *Nathan Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research *Early name for Nash Metropolitan The Nash Metropolitan is an American automobile assembled in England and marketed from 1953 until 1962. It conforms to two classes of vehicle: ...
Radio stations established in 1980 Contemporary hit radio stations in the United States Seven Mountains Media