WSIX
first went on the air as an AM radio station in Springfield, not Nashville, on January 7, 1927. Jack and Louis Draughon, who
operated the 638 Tire Service (its address), traded five barrels of oil for a 100-watt transmitter and began broadcasting
from the second floor of their building in downtown Springfield. They continued to operate the station there until 1936, when
they decided to move it to Nashville. Their first studios were in the Andrew Jackson Hotel. In 1937, the station increased
its power to 250 watts. In 1940, the station moved again, this time to the Nashville Bank and Trust Building on Union Street.
It remained there until 1961, when it moved to new studios built for it and the company's FM and television stations on
Murfreesboro Road.
WSIX-FM had
been started in 1948, making it one of Nashville's earliest FM's. The TV station had gone on the air in 1953, in studios
near Brentwood just off of Old Hickory Boulevard (the tower is still located there). The first person shown on what was then
Channel 8 was then Governor Frank Clement.
Well-known singer and Nashville native Pat Boone's father was the contractor who built the new WSIX studios on Murfreesboro
Road, completed in late 1961. The television station moved there in the summer of 1962.
The AM radio station experimented with a number of formats over the years,
with the most popular proving to be "Metropolitan Country" in the 1970's. Morning personality Gerry House has
enjoyed top ratings at the station for more than twenty years, first at the AM, and later at WSIX-FM.
