WLVU (FM)
| City | Belle Meade, Tennessee |
|---|---|
| Broadcast area | Nashville, Tennessee |
| Branding | K-LOVE |
| Slogan | Positive, Encouraging |
| Frequency | 97.1 (MHz) |
| First air date | 2000 |
| Format | Christian Contemporary |
| ERP | 44,370 watts |
| HAAT | 157.6 meters |
| Class | C2 |
| Facility ID | 26689 |
| Callsign meaning | Interpolation of K-Love |
| Former callsigns | WRQQ (1999-2012) |
| Owner | Educational Media Foundation |
| Website | klove.com |
WLVU is a radio station broadcasting on the FM band at 97.1 MHz licensed to the city of Belle Meade, Tennessee, but serving the Nashville market as a whole. It is currently branded as K-LOVE, repeating a satellite-delivered Contemporary Christian format. The station is owner by Educational Media Foundation. It is Nashville's most recent full-power FM station to take the air.
The original construction permit was granted in 1999 to Mid-TN Broadcasters, LLC, a consortium of former applicants for the permit. In 2000, control of Mid-TN Broadcasters, LLC was transferred from the original owners to the privately owned Dickey Brothers Broadcasting in exchange for WVOL(AM) and cash (BTCH-19991223ABT). Dickey Brothers later brought the station to air using the call letters WRQQ, at which point it became a sister station to WNPL (106.7 FM) and WQQK (92.1 FM).
In 2002, Dickey Brothers Broadcasting sold the three-station Nashville cluster to Cumulus Media, a publicly traded company in which members of the Dickey family served (at that time) as major shareholders, directors, and executives. In 2003, the station moved to a new state-of-the-art studio and welcomed WSM-FM and WWTN as sister stations after Cumulus purchased them from Gaylord Entertainment Company.
On September 16, 2011, WRQQ and sister station WNFN were placed into an independent trust (Volt Radio, LLC) while Cumulus sought a buyer. The move was forced by FCC ownership limits following Cumulus' acquisition of Citadel Broadcasting, which resulted locally in WKDF and WGFX joining the Cumulus cluster. The FCC, as of 2011, allows a single company to own a maximum of five FM stations and two AM stations in any given market. To meet these guidelines in Nashville, Cumulus was forced to spin off two of its seven FM stations, and the company chose WRQQ and WNFN, traditionally its two lowest-performing stations.
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