WQLL

WQLL
City Pikesville, Maryland
Broadcast area Baltimore, Maryland
Branding Q-1370 AM & 99.9 FM
Slogan "Baltimore's Greatest Hits"
Frequency 1370 kHz
Translator(s) 99.9 W260BV (Aberdeen)
First air date April 5, 1955 (as WEBB at AM 1360)
Format Oldies
Classic Hits
Power 50,000 watts day
24,000 watts night
Class B
Facility ID 27691
Transmitter coordinates 39°26′23″N 76°21′20″W / 39.43972°N 76.35556°W / 39.43972; -76.35556 (day)
39°24′29″N 76°46′32″W / 39.40806°N 76.77556°W / 39.40806; -76.77556 (night)
Former callsigns WEBB (1955-1992)
WHLP (1992-1993)
WWLG (1993-2006)
WVIE (2006-2012)
Former frequencies 1955-2002: 1360 kHz
Owner M-10 Broadcasting, Inc.
Sister stations WCBM (AM 680)
Webcast Listen Live
Website q1370.com

WQLL (1370 AM, known on air and publicized since August 2012 as Q-1370 AM & 99.9 FM) is a radio station broadcasting an Oldies & Classic Hits format. Licensed to Pikesville, Maryland, U.S.A., a northwest suburb of the city in Baltimore County, it serves the Baltimore metropolitan area.

The station is currently owned by M-10 Broadcasting, Inc. and features programming from Cumulus Media Networks and Fox Sports Radio. WQLL is the college sports flagship radio station for Towson University's Towson "Tigers" football and the UMBC "Retrievers" at the University of Maryland at Baltimore County's men's basketball teams. WQLL also airs Washington Wizards basketball in the National Basketball Association (N.B.A.) as an affiliate station.

The station signed on originally in 1955 as WEBB on 1360 kHz on the AM radio dial. It established a well-known reputation in the city's black population with its dynamic, memorable DJ's and pounding soul, blues, the Motown sound and other increasingly fractured sounds of developing rock music. In 1970, it was sold to famous entertainer and funk / soul music performer James Brown, (1933-2006), (later known as the "Godfather of Soul"!) who instituted an "Urban Contemporary" format and continued its popularity and competition among Baltimore's Afro-American black community. As a result of a bankruptcy proceeding, Brown sold WEBB to Dorothy E. Brunson, (1939-2011), in 1979. Brunson had formerly been a radio executive with the Inner City Broadcasting Corporation of New York City since 1973, where they owned five radio stations.[1] Brunson would later sell her radio stations eleven years later, including WEBB, in 1990, in order to provide funds with her partnership/syndicate for her newly-purchased UHF television station, WGTW-TV (formerly WKBS - Channel 48) in Philadelphia becoming the first African-American woman to own a television station in America.[2] The station's call sign was changed briefly to WHLP "Jobs Radio" in 1992, where help wanted ads were read on-air. The station received national attention as the first (possibly only) radio station dedicated to helping listeners find jobs. The jobs radio format was short-lived, and the call letters were changed to WWLG in 1993. WWLG-AM operated with an "adult standards" format which included big band and swing music and some early jazz, first popularized in the 1930s and 1940s which had not been heard regularly over Baltimore's airwaves for several decades except for a short interlude earlier on competing WAYE (AM 860) in the late 1980s which then had billed itself as "Big Band 86". The station changed broadcast frequency a decade later from its longtime position on the dial at 1360 kHz to 1370 kHz on July 22, 2002, which allowed it to operate with increased power but with highly directional signals from separate day and night transmitter sites.

Serving as the only regional station playing the "Great Depression" and World War II era music remembered by what came to be known as "the Greatest Generation", the station's hosts/DJ's and publicity staff encouraged and supported a number of unofficial fan clubs, singers and bands/orchestra followers, organizing social events, dances and musical concerts in the area, including touring national combos and several well-known local performers such as Zim Zemarel and His Orchestra.

After 13 years with the "big band"/"swing" musical programming (an unusually long time in the frequently unstable, changeable radio broadcasting industry), in June 2006, the WWLG station was re-lettered and drastically changed from its 1930s and 1940s music to become WVIE, billed as "V-1370, The Voice", a talk station aimed at women with programming from Joy Browne, Laura Ingraham, Tammy Bruce, Laura Schlessinger, and longtime TV talk show host Sally Jessy Raphael. By late 2007, Bruce and Raphael had been dropped in favor of non-female oriented / general talk radio programming with conservative viewpoints such as Mancow Muller, Glenn Beck, and Phil Hendrie. By two years later, on September 8, 2008, the WVIE station moved to a sports talk format, advertised as "Fox 1370 Sports Radio".

After two and a half years, by May 2011, WVIE began moving away from the sports format, adding the long-form news/features program "America's Morning News" (syndicated by Talk Radio Network) in morning "drive time" from 5 to 9 a.m. and returning to the "V-1370" branding.[3] That July, the WVIE station canceled its locally-oriented sports talk shows in favor of carrying the "America's Radio News", an all-news network, complementing its sister conservative talk station on the AM dial at WCBM (680); nighttime and weekend programming were still provided by Fox Sports Radio.[4]

A little more than a year later, August 6, 2012, WVIE changed its format to oldies & classic hits, branded as "Q-1370", returning a bit to its previous years 1993-2006 as WWLG with the 1930s and 1940s era music, only now also supplemented with the tunes from the next two decades of the 1950s and 1960s of the "rock and roll" era with what became known as "oldies" (also occasionally known as "goodies") with now antique and classic vinyl 45 rpm records. That "Baby boomer" generation's music had disappeared in the region in 2005 when WQSR-FM, after over two decades of focusing on "oldies" in Baltimore, became "JACK-FM, " moving to 102.7 FM. Further southwest, next door Washington's WBIG, changed to programming, instead playing the tunes from the later 1980s and 1990s. WQLL is now using Classic Hits (Westwood One) programming service for its format and "Alan Lee's Roadhouse Oldies Show" a local enthusiast, appears on Wednesday Nights from 6 pm to 8 pm along with several other nationally syndicated "records and commentary" shows and also including broadcasting UMBC Retrievers men's basketball games from Catonsville/Arbutus's University of Maryland at Baltimore County.[5] One day later, after petitioning the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the station's call letters were officially changed to WQLL to allow management and advertising staff to use the popular letter 'Q' in their publicity campaigns. In September 2013, WQLL added a new translator, W260BV, now broadcasting/transmitting from White Marsh, Maryland in eastern Baltimore County and Bel Air, Maryland in neighboring Harford County on 99.9 FM and rebranded itself as "Q-1370 AM & 99.9 FM" with simultaneous broadcasting on both wave-lengths.

On May 16, 2016, WQLL added a live, local morning drive program headed by Baltimore radio veteran Steve Rouse ("Rouse and Company").[6]

References

  1. ↑ Baltimore Sun: "Dorothy E. Brunson, radio station owner, dies", August 4, 2011.
  2. ↑ Baltimore Sun: "Radio station WEBB is sold owner says format to stay", October 19, 1990.
  3. ↑ http://www.pressboxonline.com/story.cfm?id=7629
  4. ↑ Zurawik, David (June 30, 2011). "Radio station WVIE (1370 AM) drops local sports talk". The Baltimore Sun. Retrieved July 1, 2011.
  5. ↑ http://radioinsight.com/blog/headlines/59166/classic-hits-returns-to-baltimore/
  6. ↑ http://www.bizjournals.com/baltimore/news/2016/05/12/steve-rouses-rouse-company-returning-to-baltimore.html
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