Best of Western Kentucky (WKDZ): How Voting Works & How to Win

What Best of Western Kentucky is and who runs it

WKDZ Radio runs Best of Western Kentucky as a readers' choice ballot, and the voting happens on Second Street rather than on a station website. The station is licensed to Cadiz, Kentucky, and a sister station, WHVO, is licensed to Hopkinsville, Kentucky, which explains why the ballot's web address combines both call letters. The ballot's page carries the title "Best of Western Kentucky 2024" and a short invitation to "Check it out now!"

That small amount of text is all the page prints, so most of what a reader needs sits in the ballot's structure. The platform type is a nomination and voting ballot, which means the contest has a nomination stage and a separate voting round. A station-run ballot of this kind asks listeners to name favorite businesses and people across western Kentucky, and the station then publishes the winners.

The pairing of two call letters in the web address is a clue to the ballot's reach. A single small-market station might cover a single county, but two stations licensed to different towns point to a wider listening area, which is why the ballot is named for western Kentucky rather than for a town. For a business, that means the audience is regional: customers in several towns may all see the ballot on air and online, and a nomination can come from anywhere in that listening area. The station's own role is to promote the ballot and, presumably, to announce results, though the page text printed here does not describe the announcement.

Which years are confirmed and when did the latest voting round run?

Editions are confirmed for 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2024 and 2025. That is seven years inside an eight-year span, and the confirmed list skips from 2021 to 2024. The latest cycle has the clearest dates: the voting round ran from February 3 to February 16, 2025, a two-week window in the first half of February.

One detail deserves attention. The ballot is titled Best of Western Kentucky 2024, yet its voting round ran in 2025. A reader should not read the title year as the voting year: the title appears to name the ballot's edition while the dates show when votes were cast. Anyone planning a campaign should work from the dates rather than the title.

The confirmed list also shows a pattern worth noting. Five consecutive years, 2017 through 2021, are confirmed, then the list resumes in 2024 and 2025. A reader should not conclude that the ballot paused in between, since a missing confirmation is not a cancellation, but a business that wants to plan around the ballot should not assume a vote every year either. The sensible approach is to treat the February window of the latest cycle as the likely season and to watch the station's announcements for the next nomination call, which comes before voting.

How does a reader vote on the Second Street ballot?

A reader opens the Second Street page, finds the Best of Western Kentucky ballot and votes during the voting round. Because the ballot type is nomination and voting, the order of events is nominations first and a voting round afterward, and only the voting round is dated in the available text.

The page prints no category list and no per-voter limit, so the live ballot is where a reader learns how many categories exist and whether a person may return to vote again. A reader who wants to support a local business should expect to select the business within a category and submit, with the platform handling the count. The two-week length of the round gives a supporter time to ask friends and customers in stages rather than all at once.

A nomination and voting ballot also changes who a supporter should ask and when. Early on, the useful message is a request to nominate, which only matters for businesses not yet on the list. Once the voting round begins, the message shifts to asking people to vote for a business that is already a finalist or nominee. Mixing the two messages confuses people, so a short, dated note works best: name the business, name the category if known, and give the first and last day of the round, February 3 and February 16 in the latest cycle.

How Best of Western Kentucky compares with other Kentucky ballots

Kentucky's other public votes on this site are mostly city and magazine polls: Best of Bowling Green, Best in Kentucky, Best of Lexington KY, Best Places to Work in Kentucky, BroadwayWorld Louisville Awards and Chevy Chaser Best of Lex. Best of Western Kentucky stands apart by its host, a pair of radio stations in the western part of the state, and by covering a region rather than a single city.

That regional scope changes the competition. A city poll such as Best of Lexington KY pits businesses within one metro against each other, while a regional ballot compares businesses that may be many miles apart, so a loyal local base matters more than citywide name recognition. It also means the audience is built from radio listeners, a different crowd from newspaper readers or magazine subscribers, and the ballot's promotion is likely to travel through the stations' own broadcasts.

Gathering support in a two-week round

A business or person on the ballot has two weeks to make the case, which is long enough for a staged campaign: one reminder at the start, another midway and a last one before the closing day. WKDZ says nothing about outside voting help in the visible text, so the station's rules govern. Our votes guide covers general outreach, and the business votes page describes outside options for companies that want to compare.