Days before WCKG-FM flips its FM Talk outlet to something else, south suburban WYKT-FM in Kankakee flipped from oldies to become My 105.5 FM, a new contemporary-hit radio station yesterday morning.
The move to CHR/Top 40 gives Kankakee and surrounding areas (Bradley, Bourbonnais, Manteno, and Momence, among others) a format reminiscent of the old WBUS-FM 99.9, or “The Bus”, which was a CHR outlet from 1987 to 1996. WBUS is now WRZA-FM, which of course is “Nine FM”.
WYKT is scheduled to carry the countdown show American Top 40 with Ryan Seacrest (AT40 airs in Chicago on WKSC-FM, or KISS-FM Sunday mornings.) Seacrest replaced Casey Kasem as host of the countdown show on January 10, 2004. Kasem co-created American Top 40, which started in 1970.
WBUS also carried American Top 40 under the reign of both Casey Kasem and Shadoe Stevens, and later carried Casey’s Top 40, the countdown show hosted by Kasem, which premiered a few months after he left AT40 in 1988. (Kasem would sign-on with a new version of AT40 in 1998, three years after the original left the airwaves.)