History
Saint Louis University established the station 9YK around 1912, using Morse code to communicate seismological and weather information. Brother George E. Rueppel, assistant director of the Meteorological Observatory at SLU, worked with 9YK before he founded WEW in 1921. Audio transmissions began at 10:05 a.m. on 26 April 1921; the first voice heard was SLU president Rev. William Robison. The station received radio license #560 to broadcast on 618.6 kHz (wavelength 485 meters) as WEW on 23 March 1922; KSD had been licensed on March 8.
The station has claimed to have broadcast the first quiz show, Question Box Hour, in 1923.
The station later moved to 833 kHz (360 meters). In April 1927 it was changed to 1210 kHz then 850 kHz; and changed in 1928 to 760 kHz, which was moved to 770 kHz on 29 March 1941 when NARBA took effect.
WEW became the first radio station in the St. Louis area to receive a permit for FM broadcasting around 1945, and began work on an FM transmission tower in 1947. The station was housed on the top floor of SLU's Law School (currently O'Neil Hall). The tower, which was located roughly where Pius XII Memorial Library now stands, was torn down in 1954, when Saint Louis University sold WEW to Bruce Barrington, a news director at 630 KXOK. Barrington sold WEW five years later. In 1964, it was bought by Charles Stanley, who moved the station to various locations, and was known for trading merchandise for commercial time.
It was later owned by the Broadcast Center, then by a rich Texan named Gary Acker through his Metropolitan Radio Group, Inc. Metropolitan Radio Group, Inc. transferred the station to Birach Broadcasting Corporation on 6 January 2004.
The station has been located in several places, including "The Hill", Busch Stadium, Soulard, and Clayton.
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