WFIL

Encyclopedia : W : WF : WFI : WFIL

---

WFIL is the name of a radio station, and also the former name of a television station, serving the American city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Its transmitters are located in Lafayette Hill, Pennsylvania.

Located at 560 on the AM dial, WFIL is immediately adjacent to New York City's WMCA (at 570), and interestingly, the two stations have extremely similar histories: both were Top 40 stations in the 1960's, both underwent a format evolution as AM radio faded as a music medium, and both are Christian/religious-formatted today. Both stations also maintained Call For Action telephone help lines, being among the first radio stations in the United States to do so. The telephone number of WFIL's Call For Action line was GReenwood 7-5312.

History

The station first went on the air in 1922, using the call letters of WFI, and shared its spot on the dial with WLIT, the latter station being owned by a local department store, Lit Brothers and WFI owned by a competing department store, Strawbridge & Clothier; a short time later the two stations merged and became known as WFIL. WFIL was purchased in 1947 by Walter Annenberg's Triangle Publications, Inc. which also owned The Philadelphia Inquirer, and joined the ABC Radio Network. WFIL's sister stations under Triangle Publications ownership were WFIL-FM and WFIL-TV in Philadelphia, WNHC AM-FM-TV in New Haven, KFRE AM-FM-TV in Fresno, California, WFBG AM-FM-TV in Altoona, Pennsylvania, WNBF AM-FM-TV in Binghamton, New York, and WLYH-TV in Lancaster/Lebanon, Pennsylvania. Triangle Publications sold WFIL AM-FM-TV to Capital Cities Broadcasting (Capital Cities Communications) in 1971 with the radio stations spun-off to new owners, WFIL-AM to LIN Broadcasting and WFIL-FM to Richer Communications which changed the call letters to WIOQ. WFIL-TV took on the new call letters of WPVI.

Studios for the early WFIL radio stations were in the Widener Building in downtown Philadelphia. Under Triangle Publications' ownership the stations were moved to a new broadcast facility at 46th and Market Street in West Philadelphia adjacent to the Arena, the first broadcast facility in the nation specifically designed for television broadcasting. It was in this new broadcast center that Triangle began broadcasting Bandstand (later called American Bandstand), first with Bob Horn, then with Dick Clark as host. In February 1964, Triangle moved the WFIL stations to a new state-of-the-art broadcast center at the corner of City Line and Monument Avenues in Philadelphia, where WPVI continues to broadcast.

Starting on September 18, 1966, WFIL began playing "Top 40" rock and roll — a genre it stuck as the most famous non-RKO "Boss Radio" format until evolving into an "adult contemporary" format in 1977. In September of 1981 country music was tried, but this too proved unsuccessful. The station switched to an "oldies" format in August of 1983 playing the hits of 1955 through 1973. The format did well until November of 1987, when WCAU-FM and WIOQ both took on oldies formats.

WEAZ inc. bought WFIL in 1987, as the station began simulcasting Easy 101.1 WEAZ (which had a soft adult contemporary format by then) on May 11, 1989. WFIL eventually changed their call letters to WEAZ (effective June 19, 1991). They broke away from 101.1, which adapted an adult contemporary format by then, and played easy listening automated on WEAZ. Then on May 26, 1993, WEAZ became WBEB while WEAZ-FM became WBEB-FM, while at the same time, WBEB resumed simulcasting WBEB-FM, as they ended their easy listening format.

The adult contemporary format on WBEB did not last long, as the station was sold for $4 million in October of 1993 to Salem Communications (which had almost bought the station three years earlier for $6.5 million but backed out of the deal at the last minute) and on November 1, 1993, the station was renamed WPHY, with a religious format focusing on Christian talk and teaching. WBEB-FM then became WBEB and to this day, continues on with their adult contemporary format.

The Christian teaching and talk format is still in use today; the call letters reverted to WFIL on September 6, 1994.

In its rock-and-roll heyday, the station was known colloquially as "Famous 56" and employed the slogan "Rockin' In The Cradle of Liberty." Its large transmitter enabled its signal to be heard as far away as Staten Island, the southernmost borough of New York City.

WFIL is also the former name of Philadelphia's ABC network affiliate, broadcasting on Channel 6. Founded in 1947, its call letters were changed to WPVI (the "P" standing for Philadelphia and the "VI" denoting the Roman numeral for 6) in 1971 after the station had been purchased by Capital Cities Communications.

External links

• [WFIL 560 AM's Website]
• [Query the FCC's AM station database for WFIL]
• [A history of WFIL]

 

---

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.

Search Titles

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

A

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

I

J

K

L

M

N

O

P

Q

R

S

T

U

V

W

X

Y

Z

?