 The nickname "Widge by the Bridge" was coined by a longtime friend of station founder Donald E. Benson, a Lansing-based dentist who thought WITL-Lansing's slogan "Whittle while you work" was something that WIDG needed.The original CP for the station had the call letters WSTI, "St. Ignace" but Benson felt the call letters looked like "Stye".In the late 1970s, Benson obtained a construction permit for an FM station that would become WMKC.