WPDC (1600 kHz, "Sweet 16 WPDC") is a

commercial Commercial may refer to: * a dose of advertising conveyed through media (such as - for example - radio or television) ** Radio advertisement ** Television advertisement * (adjective for:) commerce, a system of voluntary exchange of products and s ...

radio station Radio broadcasting is transmission of audio (sound), sometimes with related metadata, by radio waves to radio receivers belonging to a public audience. In terrestrial radio broadcasting the radio waves are broadcast by a land-based radi ...

licensed A license (or licence) is an official permission or permit to do, use, or own something (as well as the document of that permission or permit). A license is granted by a party (licensor) to another party (licensee) as an element of an agreeme ...

to serve

Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania Elizabethtown (Pennsylvania Dutch: ''Betzischteddel'') is a borough in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, United States. It is located southeast of Harrisburg, the state capital. Small factories existed at the turn of the 20th century when the popu ...

. The station is owned by JVJ Communications, Inc. and airs an

Oldies Oldies is a term for musical genres such as pop music, rock and roll, doo-wop, surf music (broadly characterized as classic rock and pop rock) from the second half of the 20th century, specifically from around the mid-1950s to the 1980s, as ...

radio format A radio format or programming format (not to be confused with broadcast programming) describes the overall content broadcast on a radio station. The radio format emerged mainly in the United States in the 1950s, at a time when radio was compelle ...

, featuring hits from the 1960s, 70s and 80s. The

studios A studio is an artist or worker's workroom. This can be for the purpose of acting, architecture, painting, pottery ( ceramics), sculpture, origami, woodworking, scrapbooking, photography, graphic design, filmmaking, animation, industrial design ...

and offices are on Dairy Lane in Elizabethtown. WPDC is powered at 1,000

watt The watt (symbol: W) is the unit of power or radiant flux in the International System of Units (SI), equal to 1 joule per second or 1 kg⋅m2⋅s−3. It is used to quantify the rate of energy transfer. The watt is named after James ...

s by day using a

non-directional antenna In radio communication, an omnidirectional antenna is a class of antenna (electronics), antenna which radiates equal radio power in all directions perpendicular to an axis (mathematics), axis (azimuthal directions), with power varying with angle ...

. At night, to avoid interfering with other radio stations on AM 1600, WPDC reduces power to 7 watts. Listeners can hear the station on an

FM translator A broadcast relay station, also known as a satellite station, relay transmitter, broadcast translator (U.S.), re-broadcaster (Canada), repeater (two-way radio) or complementary station (Mexico), is a broadcast transmitter which repeats (or tra ...

at 102.1

MHz The hertz (symbol: Hz) is the unit of frequency in the International System of Units (SI), equivalent to one event (or cycle) per second. The hertz is an SI derived unit whose expression in terms of SI base units is s−1, meaning that one he ...

History

On March 15, 1955, Colonial Broadcasting Company applied to the

Federal Communications Commission The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that regulates communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable across the United States. The FCC maintains jurisdicti ...

for a construction permit for a new 500 watt daytime-only AM station on 1600 kHz. The FCC granted the permit on August 1, 1957, by which time the station had been assigned the WEZN

call sign In broadcasting and radio communications, a call sign (also known as a call name or call letters—and historically as a call signal—or abbreviated as a call) is a unique identifier for a transmitter station. A call sign can be formally assign ...

. On May 23, 1958, WEZN signed on the air. The station went through many changes in ownership from the early 1960s to the mid-1980s. On August 1, 1961, the FCC granted a voluntary reassignment of the station's license to WEZN, Inc. The sale consummated on August 9, 1961. The FCC granted another voluntary reassignment of the license to Hershey Broadcasting Company, Inc. on November 4, 1963. The sale consummated on November 13, 1963. Following the sale, the call sign was changed to WHRY effective January 6, 1964. On March 13, 1969, the FCC granted a voluntary reassignment of the station's license to East Penn Broadcasting Corporation. The sale consummated on March 27, 1969. Following the sale, the call sign was changed to WEPN effective July 1, 1969. On September 22, 1970, the FCC granted a voluntary reassignment of the station's license to Smith Communications, Inc. Following the sale, the call sign was changed to WPDC effective February 1, 1971. On November 19, 1979, the FCC granted a voluntary reassignment of the station's license to Eastern Broadcasting Corporation. The sale consummated on January 3, 1980. This sale was followed by another voluntary reassignment of the license to Penn Broadcasting Corporation on February 25, 1980. The sale consummated on March 1, 1980. On September 20, 1984, the FCC granted a voluntary reassignment of the station's license to JVJ Communications, Inc. The sale consummated on December 7, 1984. On March 3, 2006, the FCC granted the station a construction permit to change the location of the studio and transmitter and to change to 24-hour operation with a daytime power of 1,000 watts and a nighttime power of 18 watts. The FCC granted the station a new license with the new facilities on March 26, 2009. On September 18, 2014, JVJ Communications, Inc. filed a "Notification of Suspension of Operations / Request for Silent STA" form with the FCC to take the station silent. The reason given was that " e station has run out of money and cannot afford to broadcast at this time." The FCC granted the request on October 15, 2014. The station resumed broadcasting when JVJ Communications, Inc. filed a "Resumption of Operations" form with the FCC on December 17, 2014 stating that " e station is operating pursuant to its license." On December 4, 2017, JVJ Communications, Inc. applied to the FCC for a construction permit to build an

. The FCC granted the permit on January 12, 2018. The permit specifies that the translator's facilities would include a new tower at the WPDC transmitter site. As a result, on November 13, 2018 JVJ Communications, Inc. applied to the FCC for a construction permit for WPDC, which was granted on January 3, 2019, to substitute the new tower for the currently used AM antenna tower, which would be decommissioned. The resulting required changes to the AM antenna would necessitate reducing the nighttime power from 18 watts to 7 watts. The FCC granted JVJ Communications, Inc. a license for the translator on December 13, 2018, followed by a new license for WPDC with the new facilities on March 11, 2020.

Translator

WPDC programming is

simulcast Simulcast (a portmanteau of simultaneous broadcast) is the broadcasting of programmes/programs or events across more than one resolution, bitrate or medium, or more than one service on the same medium, at exactly the same time (that is, simulta ...

on the following

translator Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. The English language draws a terminological distinction (which does not exist in every language) between ''transl ...

References

External links

Sweet16WPDC Facebook
{{Harrisburg Radio PDC