WMAL Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
WMAL is one of the oldest radio stations in Washington, D.C, broadcasting in the news-talk format at AM 630. The WMAL call letters were also used in the past on a Washington-area TV station (now WJLA) and FM radio station (now WRQX).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, which WMAL is still affiliated with 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 in the Bradley Hills section of suburban Bethesda, Maryland, also housed studios for WMAL's AM, FM, and TV stations at one time.
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; 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 Terrapins; Terrapins football and basketball broadcasts remain an important feature on WMAL.
WMAL on-air hosts today, in addition to Chris Core, include morning-show co-hosts Fred Grandy and Andy Parks, weekend host David Burd, conservative commentator Michael Graham, gardening hosts Jos Roozen and John Peter Thompson, investing adviser Ric Edelman, and lawyer Mike Collins. The station also carries national hosts Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Paul Harvey, John Batchelor, and Dr. Dean Edell, and the Coast to Coast AM show hosted by George Noory and Art Bell.
WMAL-TV was a local ABC affiliate operating on Channel 7 in Washington; it first broadcast in October, 1947. The TV station's call letters were later changed to WJLA, incorporating the initials of local media mogul Joseph L. Albritton. TV cameras bearing the WMAL call letters can be seen in the 1951 science fiction movie The Day the Earth Stood Still, which was set in Washington. The former WMAL-FM station at 107.3 FM is now WRQX, known as "Mix 107.3."
WMAL was originally owned by a company run by founder M.A. Leese. It was acquired by the publishers of the now-defunct Washington Evening Star newspaper in 1938. The family-owned company that published the Star was purchased by Albritton's company in 1976, and the WMAL properties were spun off to ABC the following year.
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