WKRD-AM
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| City | Louisville, Kentucky |
|---|---|
| Broadcast area | Louisville, Kentucky |
| Branding | 790 KRD |
| Slogan | "Louisville's Sports Radio" "Cards Radio" |
| Frequency | 790 kHz |
| First air date | 1936 |
| Format | Sports |
| Power | 5,000 watts day 1,000 watts night |
| Class | B |
| Facility ID | 53587 |
| Callsign meaning | KaRDs Radio (as in Louisville Cardinals) |
| Former callsigns | WGRC, WAKY, WVEZ, WWKY, WXXA |
| Affiliations |
Cincinnati Bengals Radio Network Fox Sports Radio Louisville Cardinals (football and men's basketball) |
| Owner |
iHeartMedia, Inc. (CC Licenses, LLC) |
| Sister stations | WTFX-FM, WQMF (FM), WAMZ (FM), WNRW (FM), WLGX (FM), WHAS (AM), WKJK (AM) |
| Webcast | Listen Live |
| Website | 790KRD.com |
WKRD (790 AM) is a sports talk formatted radio station in the Louisville, Kentucky metropolitan area. It is owned by iHeartMedia, Inc., and is known as 790 KRD. The station is best known for being a Top 40 powerhouse in the 1960s and 1970s as WAKY. The station's studios are located in the Louisville enclave of Watterson Park and the transmitter site is in east Louisville southwest of the I-64/I-265 interchange..
790 AM in Louisville was originally WGRC and featured a variety of programming typical of radio in the pre-rock era. In 1958, broadcaster Gordon McLendon, a Top 40 radio pioneer best known for his legendary KLIF in Dallas, Texas, purchased WGRC. After stunting with the novelty record "The Purple People Eater", WGRC became WAKY on July 7, 1958, and immediately shot to the top of the Louisville ratings as the market's first Top 40 music station. WAKY (known affectionately to its listeners as "Wacky") competed with 1080 AM WKLO during the 1960s and 1970s, with WAKY usually being the dominant station of the two. The station's popular personalities included Bill Bailey ("The Duke of Louisville"), Dude Walker, Gary Burbank (later of CKLW, WHAS, and WLW), Mason Lee Dixon, and the late Bert Markert (known on the air as "Weird Beard"). The station solidified its mass appeal by playing a great deal of country and R&B product mixed in with the mainstream pop and rock, owing to the large audiences for both genres of music in the Louisville market and the lack of a 24-hour R&B/soul station at the time (1350 WLOU, the area's primary black-oriented station, was a daytimer).
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