Newsradio 630 WLAP

WLAP (630 AM) is a radio station broadcasting a News Talk Information format. Licensed to Lexington, Kentucky, USA, the station serves the Central Kentucky region. The station is currently owned by Clear Channel Communications of Lexington and features programing from Fox News Radio.

About 1912, William V. Jordan of Louisville, Kentucky became involved in amateur radio experiments and operation, and by 1915 had been issued call letters 9-L-K for his wireless transmitting station. Jordan reportedly started broadcasting phonograph records to patients at Waverly Hills Hospital in 1921. He continued this until September 15, 1922, when he was granted a license, under the call letters of WLAP. The station continued broadcasting in Louisville until December 23, 1933.

After WFIW was relocated from Hopkinsville to Louisville as WAVE, Turner C. Rush and Alvin L. Witt of Lexington bought the station and requested permission to relocate it there on January 5, 1934. WLAP went back on the air in Lexington with Program Tests on March 17, 1934.

WLAP aired a Top 40 music format during the 1960s and 1970s and softened to a full-service Adult Contemporary direction by the late 1970s, by which time the Top 40 format had shifted to its sister station WLAP-FM. It was also the first station in the Lexington area to utilize a generator for emergency broadcasting purposes, which served the station well during the Super Outbreak of April 3, 1974, when tornadoes disrupted electrical service to much of the state of Kentucky and WLAP was the only radio station in Lexington able to stay on the air thanks to its generator. (1)

WLAP is currently the flagship station of the Big Blue Sports Network, which carries Kentucky Wildcats football and basketball, and is also a member of the Cincinnati Bengals radio network.