returned the license an unnecessary expense. The call letters of the station at FM 97.7 were changed to WBUT-FM, with the two stations simulcasting. In 1965 the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) enacted new rules, calling for AM-FM combo stations to offer unduplicated programming at least half of the broadcast day. The stations were purchased by Larry Berg in 1964, who did business as WBUT, Inc. For a time during the 1960s, the studios and transmitter were located on a hill south of Downtown Butler, near the Meadowood residential plan. WBUT AM/FM was sold on July 14, 1978 from Larry Berg to Brandon Communications Systems, Incorporated, a company headed by Robert C. "Bob" Brandon and his brother Ronald. (Berg would later join the staff of then-competitor WISR as a sales rep and talk show host.) However, the licensee remained under the name WBUT Inc. Not long after acquiring the two stations, Brandon moved both from their downtown Butler location at the Nixon Hotel to a Center Township office and then across the street to a former Citizens' Bank branch north of Butler at the intersection of Route 8 (a.k.a. North Main Street Extension) and Mercer Road in Center Township. When the decision was made to separate the AM and FM stations, Brandon used his knowledge in broadcast engineering to construct an automation system capable of providing live-sounding programming on his FM station, now assigned the call letters WLER-FM. WBUT and WLER would both sign on at 6 am, simulcast its morning show for two hours, break away at 8 am, and then rejoin at 7 pm before signing off at 10 pm. Music and voice-tracked disc jockeys were provided by Concept Productions, based in Roseville, California. Personalities like Steven Tyler, Dave Ware and Terry Nelson were all thought to be on-site announcers. While these announcers aired on WLER, WBUT aired more local news and information intensive programming, with popular shows like "The Super Store", a buy-sell-trade program allowing listeners to sell unwanted items or find others for sale, and "Speak Up", a locally produced talk show that ran after the noon news. WBUT and WLER welcomed a third station into the fold, longtime crosstown competitor 680 WISR, in 1997, following its sale by Butler Broadcasting, Inc. The Brandon brothers then changed the name of their company to the Butler County Radio Network. Within a few years, the Brandons would sell their