WMAL

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WMAL

Broadcast area	Washington, D.C.
Branding	630 WMAL
Slogan	Stimulating Talk - Breaking News
First air date	October 12, 1925
Frequency	630 kHz
Format	News/Talk
ERP	10,000 watts
Class	B
Callsign meaning	M.A. Leese
Owner	ABC Radio
Website	wmal.com

WMAL is one of the oldest radio stations in Washington, D.C.. The ABC/Disney-owned outlet is a news-talk formatted station, broadcasting on 630 kHz in the AM band.

WMAL first went on the air on October 12, 1925, using call letters incorporating the initials of M.A. Leese, a local optician. The station shifted through various frequencies in its first three years, until the Federal Radio Commission's national frequency allocation plan assigned WMAL the AM 630 frequency in 1928; WMAL still broadcasts on that frequency today. WMAL was a CBS affiliate from 1928 until October 19, 1932, and then was briefly unaffiliated until joining the NBC Blue network in January 1933; this network later became ABC, with which WMAL is still affiliated today. WMAL broadcast from various facilities in Washington, D.C., and suburban Maryland until July 25, 1973, when it settled in at its current studio facility at 4400 Jenifer Street NW in Washington, two blocks from the city's border with Maryland. WMAL's transmitting facility, located in the Bradley Hills section of suburban Bethesda, Maryland, once housed studios for WMAL-AM and -FM.

Among the WMAL broadcasters over the years have been Frank Harden and Jackson Weaver, who co-hosted WMAL's morning show for more than four decades until Weaver's death in the early 1990s; Tom Gauger, who also spent several decades at WMAL; Arthur Godfrey, a national radio and early-TV personality who briefly broadcast on WMAL in 1933 as "Red" Godfrey; Bill Mayhugh, a mellow-voiced overnight broadcaster; Ken Beatrice, a sports talk radio pioneer who hosted a call in show from 1977 to 1995; and Chris Core a former Voice of America announcer who has been an on-air host at WMAL since the 1970s. The station also kept a local following by broadcasting sports games featuring the Washington Redskins and University of Maryland, College Park Terrapins; Terrapins football and basketball broadcasts remain an important feature on WMAL. Legendary jazz announcer Felix Grant broadcast on WMAL for decades.

WMAL was originally owned by a company run by Leese. It was acquired by the publishers of the now-defunct Washington Star newspaper in 1938. In October 1947, WMAL-TV signed on as the first high-band VHF television station in the United States. It became an ABC affiliate a year later. The family-owned company that published the Star was purchased by Joseph L. Albritton in 1976, and, due to FCC cross-ownership restrictions of that era, the radio stations were spun off to ABC the following year. ABC continues to own both stations today, though WMAL-FM has since become WRQX (Mix 107.3). The local ABC Radio group now also includes WJZW-FM (Smooth Jazz 105.9). The former WMAL-TV is now WJLA-TV (after Albritton's initials).

WMAL on-air hosts today, in addition to Chris Core, include morning-show co-hosts Fred Grandy and Andy Parks, gardening host Jos Roozen, investing adviser Ric Edelman, and lawyer Mike Collins. The station also carries national hosts Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, Paul Harvey, and The Grandy and Andy Morning Show hosted by Andy Parks and Fred Grandy. In August 2005, conservative host Michael Graham was fired after refusing to apologize for calling Islam a "terrorist organization."

[edit] External links

• WMAL's official home page
• Official history of WMAL
• Unofficial WMAL history, with recordings of past WMAL station-ID jingles
• Photo tour of WMAL transmitting facility in Maryland