WYBY

On May 15, 1947, the Cortland Broadcasting Company applied to start a new, 1,000-watt daytime-only radio station to serve Cortland. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approved the application on July 17, 1947,^[1] and WKRT began broadcasting on 920 AM as well as WKRT-FM 99.9 on November 15, 1947.^[2] The AM station remained daytime-only until June 26, 1949, when the station began full-time operation;^[3] it had requested this before even going on the air.^[4]

In 1950, Radio Cortland, Inc., acquired WKRT from the Cortland Broadcasting Company. The company's officers included Robert Hope, a former general manager of an Alabama station, and Leighton A. Hope.^[5] Hope, who went on to become a state senator and deputy commissioner in the New York State Conservation Department,^[6] sold the WKRT stations to Crown Broadcasting of Williamsport, Pennsylvania, effective February 2, 1978.^[7] For most of the 1980s, WKRT aired Music of Your Life, a syndicated adult standards format.^[8][9]

Crown Broadcasting sold the Cortland stations to Sun Radio Corporation in 1986 for $3.1 million.^[10] Under Sun, WKRT became a 24-hour operation.^[11] It switched to an oldies format of 1950s through 1970s music plus information programming by 1988.^[12] During the 1990s, WKRT and its sister FM went through various owners, but WKRT kept its format. In 1991, Northstar Broadcasting Corporation acquired the pair for $1.1 million.^[13] Pilot Communications bought the stations in 1998^[14][15] then was purchased by Citadel Broadcasting in 1999. At the time of the Citadel acquisition, WKRT ranked 8th out of 15 radio stations serving Tompkins County.^[16]

Citadel flipped WKRT to talk in 2002, with syndicated programs including The Radio Factor, The Sean Hannity Show, and Jim Bohannon.^[17] In 2006, Citadel agreed to sell its two Ithaca stations to Saga Communications. To comply with ownership limits in the Ithaca market, Saga immediately decided to keep WIII (the former WKRT-FM) and earmarked WKRT for divestiture to the Bible Broadcasting Network (BBN).^[18] BBN continued to operate the station under the call sign WYBY until August 2, 2024, when it was taken silent for technical reasons.^[19] BBN had previously applied for special temporary authority because of problems with the directional array used to broadcast the signal at night.^[20] The broadcast license was submitted for cancellation on September 5, 2024.^[21]

The Federal Communications Commission cancelled the station’s license on September 12, 2024.^[22]

• Facility details for Facility ID 9428 (WYBY) in the FCC Licensing and Management System
• WYBY in Nielsen Audio's AM station database

42°33′22″N 76°09′17″W / 42.55611°N 76.15472°W / 42.55611; -76.15472