Early years

On July 24, 1925, WIBW first signed on the air.^[7] It was owned by Dr. Lawrence L. Dill of Logansport, Indiana.^[8][9] Dill operated the station along with his business partner, Donald Harrell.^[10]

In late 1926, the station was acquired by C. L. Carrell of Chicago, who converted it into a portable broadcasting station.^[11] It joined a roster of seven stations controlled by Carrell. Portable stations could be transported from place-to-place on movable platforms such as trucks. These were generally hired out for a few weeks at a time to theaters, mostly located in small midwestern towns that didn't have their own radio stations, to be used for special programs broadcast to the local community. (Regulating "moving targets" proved difficult, so in May 1928 the Federal Radio Commission announced it was ending the licensing of portable facilities.)^[12]

Station advertisement (1949)^[13]

WIBW's time as a portable station was brief. In early February 1927 it began broadcasting from the Connor Hotel in Joplin, Missouri.^[14] It was still under the management of Donald Harrell.^[15] However, on Mother's Day, May 8, it began transmitting under the sponsorship of the Topeka Daily Capital from the Jayhawk Theatre.^[16] The studios were located at Tenth and Kansas streets.^[17] The debut program, organized by Y.M.C.A. secretary Lyle O. Armel, was described as a benefit for "Flood Sufferers Through Red Cross".^[16]

On January 31, 1929, ownership was transferred from C. L. Carrell to the Topeka Broadcasting Association, Inc.^[18] It was organized by United States Senator Arthur Capper, who also owned the Capital. Capper died in 1951. In 1957, his family sold the Daily Capital and WIBW AM-TV to Stauffer Publications, owner of Topeka's other newspaper, the Topeka State Journal. WIBW's main studios for decades were located on Wanamaker Road in west Topeka, near the Menninger Clinic.^[19] The programming there included live country music at 6:00 a.m. as late as the 1970s. The building housing those studios was severely damaged by fire January 5, 2012.

TV and FM stations

Stauffer Publications added a television station in 1953, WIBW-TV. It was one of the earliest TV stations to go on the air in Kansas. Because WIBW Radio was a CBS affiliate, WIBW-TV primarily became a CBS television network affiliate as well, although in its early days, it also carried programs from NBC, ABC and the DuMont Television Network.

In 1961, WIBW-FM signed on the air at 97.3 MHz. In its early days, it mostly simulcasted WIBW (AM). By the 1970s, it switched to album rock and later Top 40 hits, before going to country music in 1990. It moved to 94.5 MHz in 2002, to allow a new FM station to go on the air in the Kansas City radio market. In 1997, WIBW-AM-FM were acquired by Morris Communications, while WIBW-TV was bought by Gray Communications.^[20] WIBW-AM-FM were acquired by Alpha Media in the 2010s.

Sharing time

Beginning in 1929, WIBW was required to share time on 580 kHz with Kansas State University's radio station KSAC (later KKSU), broadcasting in Manhattan, Kansas. Under the terms of the shared time agreement, the university station was on the air during afternoons, with WIBW broadcasting the other times of the day.^[19] While it was common for stations to share frequencies in the early days of radio, what was unusual was that this arrangement lasted for over seventy years. WIBW made several attempts to acquire full time operation on the frequency, especially after 1957, when Oscar Stauffer bought the Daily Capital. Despite political pressure, KSAC/KKSU stayed on the air.

In December 2001, Kansas State decided to move its sports broadcasts to the Mid-America Ag Network (MAAN), after airing them on WIBW continuously since 1969 and off-and-on since the 1950s. WIBW countered that a 1969 amendment to the timeshare agreement had granted WIBW the right to broadcast Wildcat football in exchange for allowing KKSU (then still KSAC) to extend its operating hours by 15 minutes each weekday. After long negotiations, WIBW's parent company Morris Communications agreed to update the arrangement in exchange for full use of the broadcasting hours. This resulted in WIBW buying KKSU's timeslot for $1.5 million, in addition to transferring exclusive rights to all Wildcat sporting events to MAAN. KKSU's final day of broadcasting was November 27, 2002.^[21]

Royals and Jayhawks

In 1969, the Kansas City Royals of Major League Baseball's American League began play, with WIBW carrying the games. In the Royals' early years, WIBW was considered the flagship station for the team's radio network. WIBW is one of the few stations which has broadcast Royals games continuously since the franchise's first season.

Former logo

In 2006, WIBW became the Topeka outlet for Kansas Jayhawks football and men's basketball games. On June 14, 2014, the Capital-Journal reported that WIBW would end its pact with the University of Kansas. The station renewed its University of Kansas affiliation in 2016, although the Jayhawks broadcasts subsequently moved to KMAJ and KWIC-FM.^[22]