WKKV-FM, also known as V-100.7 Jams, is an urban contemporary owned by iHeartMedia, Inc. serving the Milwaukee area. The station broadcasts at 100.7 MHz on the FM dial with an ERP of 50 kW and is licensed to Racine, Wisconsin. Its studios are located in the Milwaukee suburb of Greenfield and the transmitter site is in Raymond. The playlist of V-100.7 consists of primarily current hip-hop and R&B, but airs slower R&B and classic soul songs on its Quiet Storm program in the weekday late night hours. At 50,000 watts, WKKV's signal is one of the strongest in the area, and can travel over Lake Michigan into the state of Michigan. V-100.7 can be heard reliably as far west as Madison, Wisconsin, north to Sheboygan, Wisconsin, south into the Chicago suburbs, and east to South Haven, Michigan, Fremont, Michigan, Ludington, Michigan, and beyond depending on conditions. Due to its tower lying in close proximity to the open waters of Lake Michigan, both its analog and digital signal can travel with local quality in excess of 120 miles to the east without interference. WKKV is home to the annual "Jam 4 Peace" concert.
History
The original call letters were WRJN-FM, shared with its then-sister station. WRJN-FM began broadcasting August 26, 1948. It was licensed to RacineBroadcasting Corporation. In early 1969, the owner of another Racine station, WRAC, purchased WRJN-FM for $60,000. A few months later, the station became WRAC-FM. In December 1970, WRAC-FM flipped to a rock-based Top 40 format with the WRKR call sign, primarily targeting Racine, Kenosha and the southern part of Milwaukee County. They were known at various times as "The Rocker 100 FM", "Hot 100" and "Hitradio 100". WRKR gradually started targeting the whole Milwaukee market. At one time, WRKR was the Milwaukee-area affiliate of American Top 40. Due to heavy Top 40 competition, WRKR began adding light R&B music around 1986, and for less than a year were called "Heartbeat 101". WHBT-FM was the first "rhythmic adult contemporary" station in the country, 10 years before pioneer WAMG-FM flipped to the format. The WRKR call sign was reassigned by the FCC to a Kalamazoo, MI station about that time, where it remains today. In September 1987, the station became new-age music-formatted WBZN-FM. The station flipped to Urban contemporary on June 6, 1991, becoming WKKV-FM. After many years, the "Doug Banks Morning Show" ended in December 2007, and the station replaced him with Steve Harvey. After six years, Harvey was dropped in August 2013, and WKKV-FM became a charter affiliate of the New York-based Breakfast Club distributed in-house by iHeartRadio.
HD Radio
On April 25, 2006, Clear Channel announced that WKKV's HD2 subchannel will carry a format focusing on gospel music. In the summer of 2009, the "Hallelujah" format was replaced by "All My Jams," an Adult Urban Contemporary format available through Clear Channel's iHeartRadio smartphone application. On December 15, 2011, Clear Channel began airing the progressive talk programming of WXXM from Sun Prairie/Madison on WKKV's HD3 subchannel, giving the Milwaukee market its first station in the format, albeit with no programming originating locally from Milwaukee. After WXXM ended that format in November 2016, WKKV-HD2 began to serve as an FM HD repeater of sports station WOKY. It again switched on November 30, 2018 with a move to soft adult contemporary, branded as "The Breeze"; the move of WOKY's local sports programming to WRNW's analog FM/HD1 subchannel made it all but redundant.
