WFED

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WFED is a radio station broadcasting on 1050 kHz in the mediumwave AM band. Its studios and transmitters are located in Silver Spring, Maryland, and it serves the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area.

WFED is currently owned by Bonneville International, which also owns Washington radio station WTOP.

The current format of WFED is news and talk aimed at employees of the United States Federal Government. In 2005, the station also carried games of the Washington Nationals baseball team; these game broadcasts were switched to sister Bonneville station, WTWP, the following year. WFED now airs Navy football plus select Navy men's basketball and lacrosse games.

[edit] History

The original call letters on this frequency were WGAY, a station that played a "beautiful music" format. WGAY broadcast from the World Building, located on Georgia Avenue, just north of the intersection of Maryland 410 (East-West-Highway). WGAY moved to the FM band on 99.5 MHz, and WGAY-AM was simulcast with the FM station for a while, but then sold on Setptember 1, 1984. Greater Media, the old owner, bought radio station WWRC and sold WGAY to TM Productions of Dallas, changing the call sign to WNTR and the format to all-news.

Later, it was sold to Pat Robertson, the televangelist and founder of CBN, the Christian Broadcasting Network, who used it as the anchor of a conservative talk-radio network which he called the News Talk Radio Network. (WNTR was also the first station to carry Rush Limbaugh in Washington, before he moved to WMAL.) This ended when the World Building studios caught on fire.[1] However, Robertson's company continued to run the station from another building in Silver Spring, Maryland for a while, as part of his network and later in a brokered-program format. In the early 1990s, it was sold to Disney. (The WNTR call letters are now in use by an FM station in Indianapolis.)

Under Disney's ownership, the station was called WKDL and simulcast with WKDV in Prince William, Virginia, playing a format of children's programming. However, the network did not succeed. The station then switched to Spanish-language formatting, and when that failed, briefly carried the Genesis Radio Network of conservative talk. Metro bought the station for a short period and operated it as "Business Radio". Bonneville bought the station in 2004 and converted the station to news and talk programming aimed at Federal government employees.

The web site FederalNewsRadio.com was used for the first Internet-only all news station, which began operation on February 22, 2000. It ran Associated Press All News Radio, but when AP All News Radio was terminated, the station began an affiliation with CNN. It continues to carry original news and talk content for Federal government employees, the Senior Executive Service, and contractors.

[1] DCRTV web page