WFME (AM)
Hogan was a musical connoisseur, and drew on his record collection to provide the sound for his experiments, which typically lasted for an hour in the evening.
[9][10] In 1936, Elliott Sanger joined Hogan and formed the Interstate Broadcasting Company, with the intention of operating commercially, at a time when there were already about 25 radio stations in New York.
The transmitter, which used a homemade antenna mounted on a wooden pole, was located in a garage in Long Island City, near the Queensborough Bridge.
At 9 pm, the newspaper having been "put to bed", the station would broadcast a brief discussion of the news which would appear on the front page of the next day's issue.
In 1965, the FCC began requiring commonly owned AM and FM stations in large markets to broadcast separate programming for at least part of the day.
On December 2, 1992, the AM side broke away from the simulcast for good, changing to an American popular standards format, and the station began broadcasting in AM stereo using the C-QUAM system.
The change came a few months after WNEW (1130 AM), New York's heritage popular standards station, announced an impending sale to Bloomberg L.P. and a format switch to business information with the new callsign WBBR.
[33][34] The transaction had been rumored for at least a month, as it was originally reported by the New York Daily News on October 14;[35] however, Disney had clarified that it had not yet agreed to the sale.
[36] In January 2013, Family Radio sold the original, Newark, New Jersey-licensed WFME (94.7 FM, which it had owned since 1966, but had been programming since 1963) to Cumulus Media, who converted the station into country music-formatted WNSH.
This left Family Radio programming unavailable over-the-air in New York City proper and northern New Jersey (including Newark) for over two years.
[40] The station returned to the air on February 27,[33] again giving Family Radio full coverage of the New York City market.
[41] The entirety of the station's schedule originated from Family Radio headquarters (which in 2016 moved from Oakland to nearby Alameda, California), although WFME did carry local programming to comply with the FCC's public affairs requirements.
[42] However, in early 2021, ended regular programming and began broadcasting a recurring announcement that the station would suspend operations "in just a few days".
[45] On October 26, 2021, the station returned to the air from a new transmitter site in West Orange, New Jersey, operating with 1,000 watts under special temporary authority (STA),[46] granted by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
On March 4, 2024, WFME ceased operations and went silent, after the FCC imposed additional restrictions of the continued grants of STAs to operate at reduced power, following an objection filed by Albert David, as well as interference complaints from the nearby Goddard School and the sale to Goddard School of the building housing their transmitter and tower.
[48] On September 16, 2024, the FCC approved an STA to resume operations with 10 kW non-directional, from a New Jersey site shared with stations WPAT and WNSW.
