WRDZ (AM)
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| WRDZ | |
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| City of license | La Grange, Illinois |
|---|---|
| Broadcast area | Chicago |
| Slogan | Radio Disney AM 1300 |
| Frequency | 1300 kHz |
| First air date | 1998-12-03 |
| Format | Children's Radio |
| Power | 4,500 watts day 4,000 watts night |
| Class | B |
| Facility ID | 28309 |
| Transmitter Coordinates | |
| Affiliations | Radio Disney |
| Owner | the Walt Disney Company (RADIO DISNEY CHICAGO, LLC) |
| Website | radiodisney.com |
WRDZ-AM 1300 is an AM radio station licensed to La Grange, Illinois serving northeast Illinois, northwest Indiana and southeast Wisconsin. WRDZ is owned and operated by ABC Radio and currently broadcasts the Children's/Preteen network Radio Disney.
Prior to Radio Disney, for 30 years the station was known as WTAQ. First, it was a foreign language brokered time station. The heart of this format was weekend ethnic polka programs, serving the large Eastern European population around Chicago. "Lil Wally" Henry Sukierka, Chet Schafer, Eddie Korosa, Little Richard and many other polka shows made their home there. Later it became all Spanish as "La Mexicana" before switching to Radio Disney. During this period, it carried Chicago White Sox baseball games.
[edit] History
WRDZ was born in 1998 when ABC Radio bought WTAQ 1300 and sister station WTAU 1500 in Zion, IL to air their Radio Disney network. The stations were owned by Lotus Communications and simulcast Spanish music as "La Mexicana" In July of 1998, ABC took over and started airing Radio Disney on the stations.
WTAQ and WTAU's calls were later changed to WRDZ and WDDZ. In January of 2000, WDDZ went off the air and remained so until early 2001 when ABC Radio turned the operations back to Lotus under a local marketing agreement (LMA) Lotus mixed programming between a simmulcast of WBJX 1460 at Racine, Wisconsin and locally programmed automated Spanish music. The call letters were changed to WPJX at that time. By the summer of 2001, the LMA ended and WPJX was off the air again except for a few tests with easy listening music noted running in October 2001. These lasted for about 30 minutes and were infrequent.
In the spring of 2002, WPJX returned to the air again, simulcasting WRDZ with Radio Disney again just after it was announced that WPJX would be sold to Multicultural Broadcasting of Chicago. In the Summer of 2002, WPJX became an automated mix of oldies and classic country music under Multicultural's operation from studios in Wauconda, Illinois.
WPJX was sold to Polnet Communications in January, 2006. In May 2006, the station changed format to Spanish language Reggaeton music - a tropical Latin hybrid of hip-hop and reggae. It now runs programming from Mexico's Radio Formula.
[edit] External links
- Query the FCC's AM station database for WRDZ
- Radio Locator Information on WRDZ
- Query Arbitron's AM station database for WRDZ
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