WAAL (99.1 FM; "The Whale") is a

commercial Commercial may refer to: * (adjective for) commerce, a system of voluntary exchange of products and services ** (adjective for) trade, the trading of something of economic value such as goods, services, information or money * a dose of advertising ...

radio station Radio broadcasting is the broadcasting 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 rad ...

licensed to

Binghamton, New York Binghamton ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of New York, and serves as the county seat of Broome County. Surrounded by rolling hills, it lies in the state's Southern Tier region near the Pennsylvania border, in a bowl-shaped valley at the c ...

. It airs a

classic rock Classic rock is a radio format that developed from the album-oriented rock (AOR) format in the early 1980s. In the United States, it comprises rock music ranging generally from the mid-1960s through the early-1990s, primarily focusing on comm ...

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 broadcasting, ...

and is owned by

Townsquare Media Townsquare Media, Inc. (formerly Regent Communications until 2010) is an American radio network and media company based in Purchase, New York. The company started in radio and expanded into digital media toward the end of the 2000s, starting wit ...

. WAAL is the oldest FM radio station continuously broadcasting in the

Binghamton metropolitan area The Binghamton Metropolitan Statistical Area, also called Greater Binghamton or the Triple Cities, is a region of southern Upstate New York in the Northeastern United States, anchored by Binghamton. The MSA encompasses Broome and Tioga count ...

. It is an

affiliate Affiliation or affiliate may refer to: * Affiliate (commerce), a legal form of entity relationship used in Business Law * Affiliation (family law), a legal form of family relationship * Affiliate marketing * Affiliate network or affiliation platfo ...

of the

New York Giants Radio Network The New York Giants Radio Network is a broadcast radio network based in New York City, the official radio broadcaster of the National Football League's New York Giants. The network's radio broadcasts are currently flagshipped at WFAN, a station ow ...

. The studios and offices are on Court Street in Binghamton. The

transmitter In electronics and telecommunications, a radio transmitter or just transmitter (often abbreviated as XMTR or TX in technical documents) is an electronic device which produces radio waves with an antenna (radio), antenna with the purpose of sig ...

is off Ingraham Hill Road, also in Binghamton, amid other

tower A tower is a tall Nonbuilding structure, structure, taller than it is wide, often by a significant factor. Towers are distinguished from guyed mast, masts by their lack of guy-wires and are therefore, along with tall buildings, self-supporting ...

s for local TV and FM stations.

History

WKOP-FM

In March 1954, the station

signed on A sign-on (or start-up in Commonwealth countries except Canada) is the beginning of operations for a radio broadcasting, radio or television station, generally at the start of each day. It is the opposite of a sign-off (or closedown in Commonw ...

as WKOP-FM at 95.3 MHz. It was the FM counterpart of WKOP (1360 AM; later

WYOS WYOS (1360 AM broadcasting, AM) was a radio station licensed to serve Binghamton, New York, United States, from 1947 to 2023. It was last owned by Townsquare Media. The station went on the air as WKOP in 1947. It programmed various formats, in ...

). The two stations

simulcast Simulcast (a portmanteau of "simultaneous broadcast") is the broadcasting of 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, simultaneously) ...

and were

network affiliate In the broadcasting industry (particularly in North America, and even more in the United States), a network affiliate or affiliated station is a local broadcaster, owned by a company other than the owner of the network, which carries some or a ...

s of the

Mutual Broadcasting System The Mutual Broadcasting System (commonly referred to simply as Mutual; sometimes referred to as MBS, Mutual Radio or the Mutual Radio Network) was an American commercial radio network in operation from 1934 to 1999. In the Golden Age of Radio, ...

. They were owned by Binghamton Broadcasters, Inc. At first, WKOP-FM broadcast at only 420

watt The watt (symbol: W) is the unit of Power (physics), 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 quantification (science), quantify the rate of Work ...

s, a fraction of the station's current power. While WKOP-FM (now WAAL) has been continuously on the air since 1954,

WNBF-FM WNBF-FM was an FM radio station in Binghamton, New York, that began broadcasting, as W49BN, in 1942. It was the first commercial FM station authorized in the Southern Tier region. WNBF-FM suspended operations and was deleted in 1952. History ...

(now 98.1

WHWK WHWK (98.1 FM "The Hawk") is a commercial radio station in Binghamton, New York. It carries a country music radio format and is owned by Townsquare Media. Local disc jockeys are heard during the day on weekdays. Two syndicated shows are ...

) went on the air 14 years earlier as an experimental station owned by the Howitt-Wood Radio Company. But it left the airwaves from 1952 to 1956. In the 1960s, WKOP-FM received

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

(FCC) permission to move to 99.1 MHz, with an increase in power to 33,000 watts. By 1970, it ended its simulcast with WKOP 1360 and began playing a

progressive rock Progressive rock (shortened as prog rock or simply prog) is a broad genre of rock music that primarily developed in the United Kingdom through the mid- to late 1960s, peaking in the early-to-mid-1970s. Initially termed " progressive pop", the ...

format.

WAAL

In 1974, the station was sold to Butternut Broadcasting, which switched the

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 as ...

to WAAL. It moved to an

album-oriented rock Album-oriented rock (AOR, originally called album-oriented radio) is an FM radio format created in the United States in the late 1960s that focuses on the full repertoire of rock albums and is currently associated with classic rock. US rad ...

(AOR) format, playing the top tracks from the biggest selling albums. The station was known as "WAAL Stereo FM 99". It pronounces its call letters as "

Whale Whales are a widely distributed and diverse group of fully Aquatic animal, aquatic placental mammal, placental marine mammals. As an informal and Colloquialism, colloquial grouping, they correspond to large members of the infraorder Cetacea ...

" and uses a cartoon whale as its mascot. The station dropped its AOR format in October 1985 for Top 40/CHR after contemporary hit station WWWT-FM switched to

adult contemporary music Adult contemporary music (AC) is a form of radio-played popular music, ranging from 1960s vocal and 1970s soft rock music to predominantly ballad-heavy music of the 1980s to the present day, with varying degrees of easy listening, pop, sou ...

. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, WAAL was known as "The Hot FM" and was affiliated with the ABC FM Network. Wicks Broadcasting bought WAAL in 1996. It ended its run as a Top 40/CHR station and changed its format to

Citadel ownership, then Townsquare

WAAL was acquired by

Citadel Broadcasting Citadel Broadcasting Corporation was a Las Vegas, Nevada-based broadcast holding company founded and developed by Larry Wilson. Citadel owned 243 radio stations across the United States and was the third-largest radio station owner in the count ...

in 1998 from Wicks Broadcast Group. It was part of a $77 million deal that included a total of 16 radio stations. Citadel merged with

Cumulus Media Cumulus Media, Inc. is a broadcasting company of the United States and is the second largest owner and operator of AM and FM radio stations in the United States ahead of Audacy and behind iHeartMedia iHeartMedia, Inc., or CC Media Holdi ...

on September 16, 2011. In 2013, a $281 million, multi-station deal was worked out between Cumulus Media,

and Peak Broadcasting. Townsquare acquired all of Cumulus Media's Binghamton radio stations, including WAAL.TownsquareMedia.com/press/"Townsquare Acquiring Assets from Cumulus and Peak"
/ref> With Townsquare's take over, the classic rock format has remained in place on WAAL.

References

External links

99.1 The Whale - Official websiteThe Whale Morning CrewThe Rockin' 80's - Official websiteBig Wally's MySpace
{{coord, 42.059, N, 75.951, W, type:landmark_region:US_source:FCC, display=title AAL Classic rock radio stations in the United States Townsquare Media radio stations Radio stations established in 1954 1954 establishments in New York (state)