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Dave Magnum was inducted into the Wisconsin Broadcasters Hall of Fame June 18th in Lake Geneva at the association’s 75th anniversary convention.
 A video of the ceremony and his acceptance speech is available at https://www.wisconsinbroadcastingmuseum.org/hall-of-fame/dave-magnum/
Dave's first time on the radio was at age 13 at his hometown station WNNO-FM in Wisconsin Dells during a radiothon for Camp Wawbeek. He was hired there as a deejay at 15. Dave moved on to WIBA-FM in Madison at 19, then worked at stations in Kansas, Texas, Michigan, and New Mexico.
In 1987, he met his future wife, Lynn, when he was named program director at a station where she was employed. They returned to Wisconsin in 1991 to build their first station, a Tomah-licensed construction permit they named WBOG for the area’s cranberry bogs. Three years later, they consolidated two more Tomah stations, WTMB-FM, and WLXR-FM, which would later be upgraded and moved to a new tower addressed to Sparta which expanded coverage to Black River Falls. Their goal was to build an all-Wisconsin group with overlapping signals along the I-90/94 corridor from La Crosse through Madison to Milwaukee.
Lynn died of breast cancer in 2002 at age 33. Dave carried on with their plan, acquiring stations in the Madison, Green Bay and Milwaukee markets. In 2020, Magnum Media consolidated La Crosse radio stations 102.7 WKBH-FM, KICKS 106.3 WQCC-FM and 1490-AM WLCX. Magnum divested WLCX in 2023.
Today, Dave's sons, Reid and Ty, along with Reid’s wife, Chelsey, are taking the company into its second generation. As of 2026, Magnum Media has owned 27 AM and FM stations, 25 FM translators, and three low-power TV stations across Wisconsin.
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