WGAR-FM
country music radio station in Cleveland
WGAR-FM (99.5 FM) is a commercial radio station licensed to Cleveland, Ohio, United States, featuring a country music format. Owned by iHeartMedia, the station serves Greater Cleveland and surrounding Northeast Ohio as the local affiliate for The Bobby Bones Show. WGAR-FM's studios are located at the Six Six Eight Building in downtown Cleveland's Gateway District, and the station's transmitter is in nearby Parma. Along with a standard analog transmission, WGAR-FM broadcasts over two HD Radio channels and is available online via iHeartRadio.
Signing on in 1952 as the FM extension of WGAR (1220 AM), WGAR-FM mostly operated in obscurity until 1970, when owner Nationwide Communications instituted a progressive rock format as WNCR. Airstaff turnover, conflicts with management and increased competition from other rock stations led to a format change to Top 40 in 1973, country in 1974 and again to easy listening as WKSW in 1975. Returning to country in 1980, WKSW became WGAR-FM in 1984 in tandem with WGAR, with the AM simulcasting the FM from 1986 to 1990. WGAR-FM has remained in the format ever since, even with multiple ownership, management and airstaff changes. Since 1999, iHeartMedia (known as Clear Channel Communications until 2014) has owned WGAR-FM as part of their Greater Cleveland cluster.
History
WGAR-FM (1952–1970)
The WGAR Broadcasting Company, a group led by George A. Richards and owner of WGAR (1220 AM), first filed paperwork on January 17, 1944, to establish an FM adjunct at 45.5 MHz but due to the number of applicants exceeding the number of available channels, WGAR's application was put through a competitive hearing in April 1946. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) decided in WGAR's favor that June, but the commission's proposed power output and height above average terrain (HAAT) was significantly less than what the station had requested, thus putting the application through another set of oral arguments.
“WGAR-FM” enters the record as country music radio station in Cleveland. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what WGAR-FM, country and music can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“WGAR-FM” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, WGAR-FM, country and music provides the most credible route into that argument.
Maps, plans, fabric surveys and administrative records can establish how the site’s name, extent and function changed over time. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7949645. VIAF identifies the subject as 8221150382226113500000. The Library of Congress control number is n2017050188. Authority coordinates are 41.372, -81.718. 3 of 6 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1952, 1220, 1970 and 1973.
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Treat names, boundaries and functions as historically changeable. Maps, plans, inventories and administrative records can clarify what the place meant at different dates.
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This entry incorporates text from “WGAR-FM” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.