WJTI


WJTI is a radio station broadcasting a Regional Mexican format playing a mix of salsa, mariachi and merengue. Licensed to West Allis, Wisconsin, United States, the station serves the Milwaukee area. The station is owned by El Sol Broadcasting, LLC. The station's signal is translated by W250BN in West Allis, which broadcasts on 97.9 FM and forms the station's current branding.

History

The 1460 kHz frequency signed on the air in 1950 with the WRAC call sign, licensed to Racine. The owner of the station purchased another Racine station, WRJN-FM in 1969, changing it to WRAC-FM. A year later, the FM station flipped to a rock-leaning top 40 format as WRKR, and WRAC later adopted that call sign, simulcasting their FM sister station.
It was also for a brief time WWEG before returning to WRKR and again simulcasting the FM signal. Later, there was a short lived Spanish format.
The station switched calls to WBZN on October 14, 1987, simulcasting its sister station's new smooth jazz format. Both stations flipped to urban contemporary in June 1991, becoming WKKV.
The AM station broke away from the simulcast in November 1993, flipping to a Spanish-language format as WBJX. The year 2007 brought the current call sign, WJTI, and a new city of license, the Milwaukee suburb of West Allis.

Translators

The sale of translator station W250BN to El Sol was completed in May 2014, with El Sol beginning to simulcast WJTI upon it over that month's Memorial Day weekend. Previously the station had independently been a translator of Wisconsin Public Radio's Ideas Network via WHAD under the ownership of "Radio Power, Inc.", which moved the translator over the years up the Rock Freeway corridor from Beloit in an attempt to move it to Milwaukee in order to likely present a ready-made signal for a commercial operation to broadcast an HD Radio subchannel or AM signal over. The moves were questioned by the Federal Communications Commission, with a denial of a construction permit to the MPTV Tower in the Shorewood tower farm and an inquiry to Radio Power on their motives before the purchase by El Sol. Radio Power eventually was approved to transmit from the Hilton Milwaukee City Center tower in the downtown area, which is closer to the core Latino-American neighborhoods on Milwaukee's south side which WJTI serves than the Shorewood site.

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