 | |
| |
|---|---|
| Broadcast area | Philadelphia metropolitan area |
| Frequency | 1210kHz (HD Radio) |
| Branding | Talk Radio 1210 WPHT |
| Programming | |
| Language | English |
| Format | Talk radio |
| Affiliations | |
| Ownership | |
| Owner |
|
| KYW,WBEB,WIP-FM,WOGL,WPHI-FM,WTDY-FM | |
| History | |
First air date | May 1922; 102 years ago (1922-05) |
Former call signs |
|
Call sign meaning | Philadelphia's Talk |
| Technical information[1] | |
Licensing authority | FCC |
| Facility ID | 9634 |
| Class | A |
| Power | 50,000 watts unlimited |
Transmitter coordinates | |
| Repeater(s) | 98.1 WOGL-HD3 (Philadelphia) |
| Links | |
Public license information | |
| Webcast | Listen live (via Audacy) |
| Website | www |
WPHT (1210AM) is acommercial radio station inPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania. The station broadcasts atalk radioformat and is owned byAudacy, Inc. Its studios are in Audacy's corporate headquarters on Market Street inCenter City, and itstransmitter andbroadcast tower are on North Church Street inMoorestown, New Jersey.[2]
WPHT is aClass Aclear channel station broadcasting at 50,000 wattsnon-directional, the maximum for commercial AM stations.[3] It is one of two clear-channel stations in Philadelphia, the other being sister stationKYW. Its signal covers thePhiladelphia metropolitan area and much of theLehigh Valley region of easternPennsylvania and parts ofNew Jersey,Delaware, andMaryland. At night, it can be received in much of the Eastern United States and Eastern Canada with a good radio. Programming is also available to listeners on the HD3digital subchannel ofsister station 98.1WOGL.
WPHT programming is mostlyconservative talk. Weekdays, local hosts discuss a mix of national issues and news in theDelaware Valley. Weeknights,nationally syndicated programs are heard, includingThe Mark Levin Show andCoast to Coast AM withGeorge Noory.
On weekends, shows focus on money, health, law and real estate, some of which are paidbrokered programming.Mike Opelka, Jimmy Failla, Walter Sterling and Matt Rooney host talk shows on weekend evenings. Sunday middays feature the long-runningSounds ofSinatra withSid Mark. Some hours begin with an update fromCBS News Radio. Weather is supplied by Channel 6WPVI-TV.
WPHT airsTemple Universityfootball and men's basketball. It also carries somePenn State Nittany Lions games.
WPHT was theflagship station forPhiladelphia Philliesbaseball for 32 years, until the 2016 season, when co-owned 94.1WIP-FM took over that role.[4] However, WPHT still carries any Phillies games that WIP-FM is unable to air due to programming conflicts.
The station first began broadcasting as WCAU in May 1922. It was a 250-watt station operating out of electrician William Durham's home at 19th and Market Streets. It is Philadelphia's third-oldest radio station, having signed on two months after WIP (nowWTEL) andWFIL. In 1924, WCAU was sold to law partners Ike Levy and Daniel Murphy. Murphy later bowed out in favor of Ike's brother, Leon, a local dentist.
The station began its long association withCBS in 1927, when it was one of 16 charternetwork affiliates of the Columbia Phonographic Broadcasting System, a network airing CBS' first program on September 18, 1927.[5][note 1] The network struggled to find advertisers, however, andWilliam S. Paley, who had previously purchased time on the station for an entertainment program promoting his family's La Palina cigars, bought the network with $500,000 of his family's money and renamed it the Columbia Broadcasting System.
ActorPaul Douglas began his career at WCAU, where he worked as an announcer and sportscaster from 1928 to 1934.
In 1930, WCAU initiated ashortwave radio service, operating under thecall sign W3XAU.[6] It is believed that this was the first license issued by the FCC for a commercial international shortwave broadcast station. Initially W3XAU simulcast WCAU programming, but eventually original programming was created specifically for international listeners. W3XAU, later WCAI, then WCAB, was closed down in 1941 as CBS consolidated various shortwave operations. The 10 kW shortwave transmitter was disassembled, and WCAU staff were told that it was sent to England to aid the BBC war propaganda efforts. However, the transmitter was actually sent toCamp X, a secretWorld War II paramilitary and commando training facility located nearToronto, Ontario, Canada, becoming part of the Hydrasignals intelligence and communications program.[7][8]
A series of power increases brought the station to 50,000 watts, with a new 50,000-watt transmitter dedicated October 2, 1932.[9] The Levy brothers eventually became major stockholders in CBS, and were members of the network's board for many years.
On December 26, 1932, WCAU moved to a new facility at 1622 Chestnut Street.Broadcasting magazine called it "a thoroughly modern 9-story building ... erected especially for the WCAU Broadcasting Co."[10] The building included eight studios and "a special office for Leopold Stokowski, director of the Philadelphia Orchestra".[10]
WCAU began experimenting with an FM station in 1942 and it was licensed in 1943.[11] Thecall sign in its early years wasWCAU-FM and it broadcast at 102.9 MHz.
The Levys agreed to sell WCAU-AM-FM toThe Philadelphia Record in 1946. However, theRecord folded shortly thereafter, and its "goodwill", including the rights to buy WCAU-AM-FM, passed to thePhiladelphia Bulletin, which already ownedWPEN andWPEN-FM, and had secured aconstruction permit for WPEN-TV (channel 10). In a complex deal, theBulletin sold off WPEN and WCAU-FM, while changing WPEN-FM's call sign toWCAU-FM and WPEN-TV's call letters toWCAU-TV. The Levys continued to run the stations while serving as consultants to theBulletin, and it was largely due to their influence that WCAU-TV took to the air on May 23, 1948, as a CBS affiliate. The stations moved to a new studio inBala Cynwyd in 1952.
In 1957, theBulletin sold WCAU-AM-FM-TV to CBS.[12] This came because theBulletin had recently bought WGBI-TV inScranton, Pennsylvania and changed its call sign toWDAU-TV to complement WCAU. However, the two television stations' signals overlapped so much that it constituted aduopoly underFederal Communications Commission (FCC) rules of the time. CBS had to get a waiver to keep its new Philadelphia cluster. In addition to significant overlap of the television stations' grade B signals, the FCC normally did not allow common ownership ofclear channel stations with overlapping nighttime signals.
In the 1960s, WCAU gradually began moving away from music programming, as most CBS stations. By 1967 it had become atalk station with considerable strengths in news and sports. All of Philadelphia's major professional sports teams had WCAU as their flagship radio station at one time or another. Although the station's ratings were good, in the mid-1970s, CBS made a corporate decision to move WCAU to anall-news format. All-news had earlier been established onWCBS in New York City,KNX in Los Angeles, and several other CBS AM stations.
WCAU never caught up to established all-news rival KYW. By 1980, WCAU was making moves to reclaim its heritage as a talk and sports leader. However, 96.5WWDB-FM had established itself as a strong talk station, and WCAU struggled for years to attract listeners and establish a consistent image.
On August 15, 1990, CBS abruptly changed the WCAU call sign after 68 years, becoming WOGL. It dropped the talk format in favor ofoldies of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. It was partially simulcast with its FM sister station, by thenWOGL-FM.[13]
In 1993, the AM station began runningsports talk after 7 pm. The station went full-time with the format March 18, 1994, with the calls switching to WGMP and the station now calledThe Game.[14] Once again it went against a deeply entrenched competitor,WIP with a much weaker lineup of mainly syndicated personalities, and critically without any local professional sports rights, effectively leaving the format adrift with little support as CBS itself was distracted with theacquisition of Group W/Westinghouse and a trade of WCAU-TV toNBC forKYW-TV.
The CBS/Westinghouse merger completed a year later, and 1210 was now a sister station to its long-time rival, KYW. With this move, the higher-rated KYW became the flagship station ofCBS Radio's Philadelphia cluster.[15] Finding it a losing battle to continue to compete with WIP, CBS soon began to phase out its existing sports talk programming through the summer of 1996.
Finally, on August 23, the station went all-talk once again as WPTS, calls switched merely a month later to avoidradio diary confusion withWPST to the north inTrenton, New Jersey, landing on WPHT instead. Only a year later, WIP became a sister station to WPHT when CBS merged with its owner,Infinity Broadcasting Corporation, which was then part ofViacom.
On February 2, 2017, CBS Radio announced it would merge withEntercom.[16] Entercom already owned numerous radio stations around the country and wanted to add the CBS stations to its portfolio. The merger was approved on November 9, 2017, and was consummated on the 17th.[17][18] In 2021, Entercom changed its name to Audacy, Inc.
In 2020, WPHT hostKen Matthews was named one of the 100 most important talk radio show hosts (the "Heavy Hundred") in America byTALKERS Magazine.[19]
