WPHT

Encyclopedia : W : WP : WPH : WPHT

History

The station first began broadcasting in May 1922 as WCAU, a 250-watt station operating out of electrician William Durham's home on 19th and Market Streets. It is Philadelphia's second-oldest radio station, having signed on two months after WIP. In 1924, WCAU was sold to law partners Ike Levy and Daniel Murphy. Murphy later bowed out in favor of Ike's brother, Leon.

The station began its long association with CBS in 1927, when it was one of 16 charter affiliates of a network called the Columbia Phonographic Broadcasting System. The network struggled to find advertisers, however, and wa Paley bought the network with $500,000 of his family's money and renamed it the Columbia Broadcasting System. In 1933, WCAU moved to a new studio on Chestnut Street, the first building in the country designed for a radio station. A series of power increases brought the station to 50,000 watts, allowing it to cover most of the eastern half of North America at night.

The Levys sold WCAU to the Philadelphia Record in 1946, but continued to run the station until the Record sold it to the Philadelphia Bulletin a year later. The Levys had already secured a construction permit for a television station, and on April 23, 1948; WCAU-TV signed on as a CBS television affiliate. The stations moved to a new studio in Bala Cynwyd in 1952.

In 1957, the Bulletin sold WCAU-AM-FM-TV to CBS. This came because the Bulletin had recently bought WGBI-TV in Scranton, Pennsylvania and changed its calls to WDAU-TV to match WCAU. However, the two television stations' signals overlapped so much that it constituted a duopoly under FCC rules of the time. CBS had to get a waiver to keep its new Philadelphia cluster, however. In addition to significant overlap of the television stations' grade B signals, the FCC normally did not allow common ownership of clear channel stations with overlapping nighttime signals.

In the 1950s, WCAU gradually began moving away from music, eventually becoming a news and talk station in the 1970s. Ratings were decent, though it was far behind longtime rival KYW-AM. It did, however, manage to snatch the Philadelphia Phillies away from KYW in 1982. The Phillies have been on 1210 AM for all but a few years since.

On August 15, 1990 CBS abruptly changed WCAU's calls to WOGL-AM after 68 years and dropped the talk format in favor of oldies. In 1993, it began running sports talk after 7 PM. The station went all-sports as WGMP (The Game) on March 18, 1994. However, WGMP had no luck whatsoever against WIP, even though WGMP had a much stronger signal.

However, only a year later, CBS merged with Westinghouse Electric Corporation, thus making 1210 AM a sister station to its longtime nemesis, KYW. WGMP then moved to KYW's studios on Independence Mall for a time before returning to the Main Line. Realizing that WGMP would never be able to compete against WIP, CBS began phasing out the sports talk shows in the summer of 1996. Finally, on August 23, 1210 AM went all-talk once again as WPTS (We're Philadelphia's Talk Station). The calls changed again less than a month later to the current WPHT. Ironically, only a year later, WIP became a sister station to WPHT when CBS bought its owner, Infinity Broadcasting.

Format

It also broadcasts all Phillies games. In the past Friday night games were moved to WIP so as not to conflict with Sid Mark's Fridays with Frank program. However, Fridays with Frank will shortened to 30 minutes from 6-6:30 PM ET sometimes when the Phillies play on Friday nights during this 2006 Phillies season or be on for the full hour 6-7 PM ET if the Phillies play at a later time on Fridays.

External links

• [The Big Talker 1210AM website]
• [Query the FCC's AM station database for WPHT]

.54 billion USD (2005) | Employees: Unknown at this time. | Stock Symbol: NYSE: [CBS] | Website: [www.cbscorporation.com]

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