[1]: 26 On October 25, 1933, WFIW was purchased by George Norton Jr.[1]: 30  The station's transmitter was moved to Louisville, with the call letters being changed to WAVE.

[1]: 30  It carried NBC's schedule of dramas, comedies, news, sports, soap operas, game shows and big band broadcasts during the "Golden Age of Radio".

After more than six years transmitting drom the Brown Hotel building, the station's transmitter site was relocated to Jeffersonville, Indiana, in November 1940.

[1]: 107 In the fall of 1989, the station dropped local programming and began running a satellite-fed syndicated oldies format.

[12] In August 2000, Hearst-Argyle (which bought all of Pulitzer's broadcasting outlets the year before) sold the radio station to Salem Communications.

[13] In the 1990s, the WGTK call letters belonged to a classic rock station in Middlebury, Vermont (now WWFY in Berlin).

[15] On February 10, 2020, Word Broadcasting announced that it would take advantage of the option in its agreement to acquire the stations from Salem for $4 million;[16][17] the sale was completed on May 25, 2022.

Previous flagship WHAS had prioritized in-state rivals, the University of Kentucky Wildcats, with conflicting Cardinals games airing on WKRD.

[19] On weekdays, WGTK runs nationally syndicated Salem Radio Network talk shows: Hugh Hewitt, Mike Gallagher, Chris Stigall, Larry Elder and Charlie Kirk.

WGTK had aired a local midday show with former WHAS host Joe Elliott but that was discontinued in the fall of 2015.