The year 1983 in radio involved some significant events.
Events
January 3 – Following its sale to Sconnix Broadcasting, WLLR of East Moline, Illinois debuts at 101.3 FM and moves its studios to Davenport, Iowa. The station carries over a country format, which had been used by its previous owner under the previous call letters WZZC, which had been in place since 1978. The station continues its steady climb in the Quad-Cities Arbitron ratings and eventually becomes the market's top-rated station.
July 2 – "Solid Gold Country," a country gold-formatted program, debuts by the United Stations Programming Network. The original format is a three-hour weekly program featuring interviews by a feature artist and song blocks covering various topics and a feature year. Host is Stan Martin, with Ed Salamon as producer and country music journalist Tom Roland as lead writer. This original format will run 18 months, until being reformatted as a daily one-hour program.
August 2 – WHTZ (Z100) in New York City debuts, soon becoming one of the most influential CHR stations in the US. Z100 has competition in the format from 95.5 WPLJ, which flipped from album-oriented rock to CHR on June 30 of that year, and Z100 literally goes from "worst to first" in the ratings.
December 12 – KYA moves broadcasts solely onto 93.3 FM, leaving 1260 AM (which they owned since 1926 and was sold to Bonneville International) which became a simulcast of KOIT FM, at midnight.
March 16 – Arthur Godfrey, 79, 27-year host of Arthur Godfrey Time on CBS, as well as host of Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts (on radio from 1946 to 1956; on TV from 1948 to 1958); one of history's most influential broadcast personalities.
August 4 - Yuri Levitan, 68, Soviet Russian radio announcer.
^Cox, Jim (2008). This Day in Network Radio: A Daily Calendar of Births, Debuts, Cancellations and Other Events in Broadcasting History. McFarland & Company, Inc. ISBN978-0-7864-3848-8.