WKDM
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| WKDM | |
| City of license | New York City |
|---|---|
| Broadcast area | New York City |
| Frequency | 1380 kHz |
| First air date | September 25, 1926 |
| Format | Brokered Ethnic, Mandarin Chinese |
| Power | 5,000 watts, with construction ongoing to increase night-time power to 13,000 watts |
| Class | B |
| Facility ID | 71137 |
| Former callsigns | WAWZ/WBNX (1931-1984) WNNY (1999-2002) |
| Owner | Multicultural Broadcasting (MRB Licensee, LLC) |
| Webcast | Listen Live |
| Website | http://www.mrbi.net/wkdm.htm |
WKDM 1380 is an ethnic brokered station serving New York City and owned by Multicultural Broadcasting. The station broadcasts in Mandarin Chinese, 24 hours a day from Monday to Friday.
[edit] History
The station began operation in 1926, and moved several times around the dial. Six hours a day the station ran religious programming and during those hours it was WAWZ and owned by Pillar Of Fire. The remaining 18 hours a day it was WBNX and ran general entertainment and brokered programming. During those hours WBNX was locally owned. Its call letters stood for its station's location, the borough of the Bronx, New York. It shared its frequency with station WAWZ in central New Jersey, and so was not on the air 24 hours per day.
In 1960 the 18 hours a day of programming were sold to United Broadcasting. The station continued to share time with WAWZ until 1984 when United bought out the rest of the day and Pillar Of Fire kept 99.1 FM religious as WAWZ (which is now Star 99.1).
WBNX though evolved to a Spanish contemporary music station most of the day by the mid 1960s. It still ran some Jewish programming and Italian shows on weekends part of the day. In 1984 the station was renamed WKDM. Ratings were decent until 97.9 FM went Spanish. At that point the ratings went down. As a result in the early 1990s the station increased leased-access/brokered shows. In 1992 it went completely brokered and sold to Multicultural in 1994.
In 1999 Multicultural sold WKDM to Mega Communications (in exchange for cash and various Washington D.C. area stations). Mega changed call letters to WNNY and instituted an all news Spanish format (Noticas 1380). Eventually, the all-news evolved into a news/talk format. This experiment failed and Mega decided to flip call letters to WLXE and formats again (this time to Mexican pop music under the moniker X-1380).
A few months later, Multicultural bought the station back and reverted to brokered shows in 2002. Call letters reverted to WKDM.
The WBNX calls now reside on UHF Channel 55 in Cleveland, Ohio.
WKDM aired the FIFA World Cup 2006 matches in Spanish and also transmits Red Bull New York matches. It is also scheduled to air 2007 CONCACAF Gold Cup and Copa América 2007 matches.
Since 2007, WKDM broadcasts program in Chinese Mandarin 24 hours a day, Monday to Friday. Like other Sino Radio stations, WKDM will provide drama, popular music, talk shows, news program, children’s program, sports, as well as programs from China and Taiwan.[1] Also as of 2007, construction of a new tower is underway that will allow the station to increase its night-time power from 5 kW to 13 kW.[2]
[edit] References
[edit] External links
- WKDM Website
- Query the FCC's AM station database for WKDM
- Radio Locator Information on WKDM
- Query Arbitron's AM station database for WKDM
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