Cities in KSYN's primary coverage area include Joplin, Neosho, Monett, and Nevada, Missouri; Pittsburg, Parsons, Fort Scott, and Chanute, Kansas; Miami and Vinta, Oklahoma; and Bella Vista, Rogers, and Bentonville, Arkansas.
Following an injury that occurred during the Battle of the Bulge, Neal was transferred to Paris, France where he began his career in broadcasting with the Armed Forces Radio Service.
While the increasing popularity of Rock 'n' Roll helped propel KSYN's rapid ascent to number one in listener ratings, Neal still had to overcome a fundamental problem: few people in those days owned FM receivers.
To meet this challenge, KSYN provided free radios to area businesses and organizations so that they could hear for themselves the differences in sound quality between AM and FM.
To reach mobile listeners, the station gave away hundreds of FM car radios at live remotes and on the air to callers who answered trivia questions correctly.
This promotion effectively closed downtown for a day, leading the city to inform the station owner that any future permit applications would not be viewed favorably.
In the late 1960s and throughout most of the 1970s, broadcasting Hall of Fame announcer Bob James hosted a popular news talk show on Sunday mornings that featured local and state public officials, high school and college coaches, and other newsmakers.
During the days following the incident, KSYN provided in-depth coverage of the events from its mobile news unit, which was parked downtown near what remained of the hotel.
When, after 77 hours, rescue workers found one of the men alive in a corner of the hotel's basement, James was there to report the news that so many had been waiting to hear.
The station regularly gave away thousands of dollars in cash, not to mention countless tee shirts, hats, cases of soft drinks, and Worlds of Fun tickets.
Given the overall favorable dynamics, it was in this year that William B. Neal chose to conclude his career in broadcasting—a career that spanned more than a half-century by selling KSYN to Big Mack Broadcasting, Inc. Big Mack was owned by Chuck Dunaway who was, like his predecessor, an influential figure within the radio business, having been inducted into both the Texas and Ohio Broadcasting Halls of Fame.
During the Zimmer era, the station has been brought fully into the modern, computer age and KSYN's position near the top of listener surveys has been re-established.
Under Zimmer, KSYN became only the second station in the Four-State Region to begin broadcasting in HD Radio and was one of the first to embrace the internet platform for content distribution.