WVAB was a commercial radio station licensed to serve

Virginia Beach, Virginia Virginia Beach (colloquially VB) is the most populous city in the U.S. commonwealth of Virginia. The city is located on the Atlantic Ocean at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay in southeastern Virginia. It is the sixth-most populous city in the ...

, at 1550 AM, and serviced parts of the

Hampton Roads Hampton Roads is a body of water in the United States that serves as a wide channel for the James River, James, Nansemond River, Nansemond, and Elizabeth River (Virginia), Elizabeth rivers between Old Point Comfort and Sewell's Point near whe ...

region. The station broadcast from 1954 to 2018, ceasing operations when owner

Birach Broadcasting Corporation Birach Broadcasting Corporation is a company based in Southfield, Michigan, USA, that owns several AM radio stations and, formerly, one low-power television (LPTV Low-power broadcasting is broadcasting by a broadcast station at a low transm ...

voluntarily turned their

license A license (American English) or licence (Commonwealth English) 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 part ...

back to the

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(FCC) for cancellation. The license surrender had followed an investigation by the commission into a decade of limited operations for it and co-owned WBVA (1450 AM).

History

WVAB had a long history in Virginia Beach, moving from a

popular music Popular music is music with wide appeal that is typically distributed to large audiences through the music industry. These forms and styles can be enjoyed and performed by people with little or no musical training.Popular Music. (2015). ''Fun ...

station to strictly

news News is information about current events. This may be provided through many different Media (communication), media: word of mouth, printing, Mail, postal systems, broadcasting, Telecommunications, electronic communication, or through the te ...

and finally

gospel Gospel originally meant the Christianity, Christian message ("the gospel"), but in the second century Anno domino, AD the term (, from which the English word originated as a calque) came to be used also for the books in which the message w ...

programming.WTKR NewsChannel 3: News, Weather and Traffic in Hampton Roads and North Carolina , Two AM Radio Stations Now Silent In Virginia Beach
/ref> Sidney Kellam, a scion of political and economic power in Princess Anne County and Virginia Beach during mid-20th century, and members of the Kellam family, were the original owner and founders of WVAB. The studio and offices were long-located over the Jewish Mother Restaurant on Pacific Avenue, its headquarters for the first 34 years of its existence. WVAB had been a pop and

rock music Rock is a Music genre, genre of popular music that originated in the United States as "rock and roll" in the late 1940s and early 1950s, developing into a range of styles from the mid-1960s, primarily in the United States and the United Kingdo ...

station, relying on a series of itinerant disc jockeys to purvey their various musical tastes to a limited local audience. Don Beckstrom was a constant figure on WVAB both on the air and as program sirector during this period. Eventually, advertising revenues trickled to a halt at the end of the 1980s. A succession of new owners followed beginning in the early 1990s. Since March 19, 2008, the station was off the air, following financial problems and an apparent vandalism incident of March 16. The Norfolk '' Virginian-Pilot'' newspaper reported that both WVAB—which had carried local gospel programming—and WBVA were off the air, with was no word on when or if they would return. According to Virginia Beach police, on March 16, 2008, someone felled the stations'

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 ...

. Margie Long with the Virginia Beach Police Department was quoted in local media as saying "The tower, approximately 200 ft. of it, collapsed to the ground. It appears there were numerous lines, support lines that were cut. We are investigating this as a destruction of property. There are no suspects, he said, but the investigation is ongoing." The tower stood in the 500 block of de Laura Lane, just off North Witchduck Road and north of Virginia Beach Boulevard. WVAB was in bankruptcy and the station was sold to

on April 1, 2008, according to FCC records. On January 22, 2018, the FCC designated WVAB and WBVA's license renewals for a hearing. According to the commission's records, WVAB operated for a total of 357 days in the two license terms between April 1, 2008, and November 30, 2017, and was silent for the remaining period of nearly nine years. When it did operate, in order to avoid automatic deletion of its license after one continuous year of silence, it was at 6 watts from a temporary transmitter site at the western edge of

; the FCC estimated that WVAB covered two percent of its licensed service area from that site. Birach claimed since acquiring the stations that it had been unable to get zoning approval for a new tower. The full board of five commissioners would have determined whether renewing WVAB and WBVA's licenses would serve the public interest. Before the FCC came to a decision, Birach attempted to donate WVAB's license and audio equipment—but not any transmission equipment or facilities—to two different nonprofits. When both donations fell through, Birach surrendered the WVAB license on September 7, 2018. The FCC cancelled the station's license on September 10, 2018.

References

External links

Facility details for Facility ID 57611 (WVAB)
in the FCC Licensing and Management System * ( Guide to reading History Cards) (covering 1954–1981) {{Birach Broadcasting VAB Radio stations established in 1954 Birach Broadcasting Corporation stations 1954 establishments in Virginia Radio stations disestablished in 2018 2018 disestablishments in Virginia Defunct radio stations in the United States VAB