Owned by the University of Kentucky (UK), it has an Adult Album Alternative radio format, airing more than 100 hours of music per week.

[2] In October 1937, the FCC announced a sweeping allocation of frequency assignments that included a band for Apex stations, consisting of 75 channels with 40 kHz separations, and spanning from 41.02 to 43.98 MHz.

[7][8] The original program director was Ruth Foxx Newborg, and from the beginning the station was owned by University of Kentucky.

[14] In June 1944 WBKY was issued permission to move from Beattyville to the Lexington campus of the University of Kentucky.

In 1948 the station reported that due to the lack of listeners with FM radios, it was on the air for only 6 hours per week, from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m. on Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings.

[21] WBKY helped create NPR, and was one of the 90 stations that carried the inaugural broadcast of All Things Considered when it debuted in 1971.