WSNL is a radio station broadcasting a religious format. Licensed to Flint, Michigan, it first began broadcasting in 1946. The original call letters were WFLM, but the station was purchased in December 1946 by George W. Trendle and H. Allen Campbell, who changed the call letters to WTCB and made the station into Flint's NBC Radio Network affiliate. The calls changed to WTACOctober 13, 1948, still under Trendle and Campbell's ownership. WTAC popularly stood for "WE THE AUTO CITY", referring to Chevrolet and Buick plants formerly located in Flint, but it actually stood for Trendle and Campbell. Trendle and Campbell sold WTAC to a Hawaii-based group in 1954. Under the ownership of Radio Hawaii, Inc., WTAC shed its NBC affiliation to become one of Michigan's first Top 40 music stations in 1956. Its original program director was Mike Joseph, who would launch the legendary WKNR "Keener 13" in Detroit in 1963 and later went on to create the Hot Hits format in the early 1970s. J.P. McCarthy, later a Detroit morning institution for decades at WJR, was WTAC's original Top 40 nighttime DJ in 1956. The station was also owned for a time by the Chess brothers, who owned and operatedChess Records. Chess sold the station in 1961 to a Philadelphia group that included Gene Milner who became manager of the station. "The Big 600" flourished as a Top 40 rock station during the 1960s and 1970s before changing to a country format in 1981. In its final years as a Top 40, WTAC helped introduce the Australian heavy metal band AC/DC to American audiences. During the early and mid-1990s WTAC operated as a contemporary Christian music station; the WTAC calls are now used on Smile FM's 89.7 FM signal in the Flint area. Christian Broadcasting System purchased the station in 1997 and installed the current call sign and format. The station has been based in Grand Blanc Township for nearly its entire history; its studios were located near the corner of Hill and Center Roads for decades until moving to its current home on South Saginaw Street sometime in 2003.
