HOT 100 Columbus streams urban contemporary hip-hop and R&B, a chart-driven mix of today's biggest tracks and recent favorites, live and free on Radio Shuffle. Press play and it starts instantly, no account or app download required.
A format flip built to fill a gap
The Hot 100 brand launched in Columbus, Georgia in January 2018, when iHeartMedia flipped adult contemporary "Sunny 100" over to an urban contemporary format almost overnight, according to Inside Radio's coverage of the launch. The station briefly stunted as "Santa 100" that same week before flipping for good to "C-Town's Hottest Hip-Hop & R&B," opening its new sound with Migos, Cardi B, Jay-Z, Khalid and SZA. The timing was no accident: iHeartMedia sold its existing hip-hop outlet, "98.3 The Beat" WBFA, and needed a new urban voice in the market to replace it.
A frequency with its own tangled past
The signal behind the format traces back decades under a string of different call letters. According to Wikipedia's history of the station, it first went on air in 1948 as WSAC, then cycled through WGBA, WPNX, WIQN, and WHAL before landing on WGSY when Hot 100 launched in 2018, and finally WHTY. Few Columbus radio identities have worn that many names while broadcasting from the same stretch of dial space.
Where the brand lives on
The urban format did not last on the FM airwaves. iHeartMedia flipped the frequency back to adult contemporary "Sunny 100" in June 2020, resurrecting the branding the station had carried from 1987 until the 2018 flip, according to RadioInsight's report on the reversal. The Hot 100 name kept going anyway, as an online-only iHeartRadio stream that never got the memo the FM dial had already moved on, giving Columbus hip-hop and R&B fans a way to keep the format alive even after it disappeared from car radios.
Listen free on Radio Shuffle
HOT 100 Columbus streams around the clock, and Radio Shuffle carries the feed live with nothing to install and no subscription required. Press play for the urban contemporary format that outlived its own frequency.