WAMO now in the hands of Pittsburgh Public Media
December 30, 2022We’ve been talking about WAMO-AM (660 Wilkinsburg). The FCC noted the transfer of the station from Martz Communications’ Radio Power to Pittsburgh Public Media on Wednesday. Martz has donated the station to PPM and should receive a decent tax break; the amount yet to be determined.
When the move was announced in November, many outlets had either guessed or assumed the agreement with Audacy would become null and void. Thereby “WAMO” as heard on W297BU (107.3 Wilkinsburg) would have to originate from one of Audacy’s HD2 channels. But the lease of the station to Audacy will continue as it stands as there is “no prohibition” for a non-comm broadcaster to own a commercial outlet. Therefore the WAMO callsign will remain in tact as will the format. The distant future remains full of guesses and “what-ifs” with a number of possibilities in the offing for the station.
I thought 660 would go jazz for the new year, on a better signal than 1550 has. In the car it seems like you can hear 660 for a hundred miles. With a decent radio, jazz sounds goo on AM, like in my friend’s new Hyundai Elantra, the radio sounds really good on AM! They’ve finally made a breakthrough on car radio AM audio quality, must be a newly developed chip.
Maybe the idea is that PPM Jazz can maintain 660 and 1550 since they’re both at the same site, and PPM could get paid for leasing the signal back to Martz?
I wish radio broadcasters had blogs, where they could talk about everything happening at their stations, from a multi-author blog from tech to hiring, or even when they add a new artist to the playlist. They wouldn’t have time? Well, how does every celebrity post all hours of the day, and put their foot in it!?.. 🙂
Boom