WLRS Trivia: Louisville's first successful, stand-alone FM station was WLRS, which signed on in 1964. The calls stood for Louisville Radio School, and was intended as a training tool for students of the school.

In the late-60s, Clarence Henson agreed to sell WLRS to WAKY. However, the deal fell apart when the six-month deadline to complete the transaction wasn't met.

In 1970 WLRS was one of only nine stand-alone FM stations in Kentucky.

WLRS topped Louisville's Arbitron ratings in 1978.

In 1981 WLRS became the sister station of WAVG (formerly WAVE).

WLRS (102-FM) went down for the count yesterday.

No, the station hasn't been kayoed. It's trying to attract attention to the change in music format -- still a secret -- that it will make sometime on New Year's Day by turning its entire programming over to a computerized voice.

In the publicity stunt, the mechanized referee began counting down from 70,000 to zero yesterday at 2 a.m. There's no music, no commercials -- nothing but the automated voice.

Peter Smith, WLRS program director, says he's not sure when zero will be reached, since the robot randomly chooses varying sentence lengths for the count. It is expected to run out of numbers between 7 a.m. and noon Tuesday, and then the station will switch over to the new sound.

Smith won't say what the new format will be. He does admit that the listening will be somewhat monotonous for the next few days, but he also hopes it will be intriguing.

WLRS has been playing current album-oriented rock. "That's a good format, which had a strong following, and it's a shame sponsors wouldn't buy it," Smith said.

The old format primarily appealed to 16- to 25-year-olds, Smith said, but the new format is intended to broaden the station's age into the 25 to 54 range. The possibilities span the radio format spectrum, from country to easy-listening.

No local personalities will be heard for the first couple of weeks after the change. Smith says management wants to emphasize the music first. He said that no one is being fired and that the station hopes to "give everyone a shot" at keeping his or her job, but he wouldn't say who might be assigned to what shift.

WLRS is owned by Radio One of Louisville.

WLRS, the hard rock station many people grew up with, went soft New Year's Day and unofficially renamed itself Mix-102 (FM).

The station now bills itself as "a mix of the best hits of the 1960s, '70s, '80s and today." That sounds a lot like what WVEZ, KISS and, to some extent, WDJX are playing. People may have to look at their FM dials to know what station they're tuned to because of the copycat programming.

The switch occurred Tuesday at 9:27 a.m., bringing listeners blessed relief from five days of computer-speak countdown. That was more redundant than when radio stations spun "Purple People Eater" around the clock in the 1960s.

Mix-102 is playing almost continuous music to get people used to the new sounds. Live personalities apparently will be added in a few weeks, but whether familiar LRS names will be back is up in the air.

The edition of Mutual's "The World Today" aired on WLRS on June 5, 1968, the day of the assassination or Robert F. Kennedy, and constituted exclusively of assassination coverage. It's introduced by Dan Steffen, who made the original recording. All commercials played in the newscast are included.

It sounds like WLRS had a call letter change when they flipped from rock to an adult contemporary format on New Year's Day 1991, but the call letters were still officially WLRS when legal IDs were given. The real WMIX got a little upset when they found out another station was using their call letters. Mark Stahr, who was at WLRS at the time says, "We later received a call from some official that said if we don't stop using WMIX that we would get a C&D [Cease & Desist order]. The call letters were from somewhere in Michigan I believe. I don't think we ever received a C&D but I know I had to spend the entire weekend editing and changing all the station imaging. The dropping of WMIX happened around May or June of 1991. I was the acting PD that weekend while Peter Smith was out of town. The legal call letters were always WLRS."  

Technically, the station (105.1 FM, licensed to Shepherdsville) was still WXLN when
this was recorded, but the call letters would be officially switched to WLRS a few days later.