WAGA The station
signed on the air on August 1, 1937. Its
call sign was WAGA. It was once the
sister station of
WAGA-TV, now Atlanta's
Fox TV station. WAGA was powered at 1,000 watts by day and 500 watts at night. The
Atlanta Journal newspaper, which owned Atlanta's top station,
WSB, had difficulty choosing between the two
NBC radio networks, the
Red Network and the
Blue Network. WAGA's on-air slogan during the station's early days was "Atlanta's Wave of Welcome". It then moved to the better dial position of 590 AM in 1942. The 1480 kHz frequency later returned to the air under a new license as
WYZE, with no affiliation to WAGA. The call sign changed to WPLO, which stood for Plough. The Top 40 sound ended in 1966, when WPLO switched to a
country music format.
Radio Disney The country format ended in 1996. On November 18th at 5a.m., the station flipped to
children's radio. It adopted the
Radio Disney format with the call sign changing to WDWD. In September 2009, the station was forced off the air for a week when nearby
Noses Creek flooded. The creek reached double its
flood stage during the historic record-breaking
2009 Atlanta floods. The station had been shut down prior to the flood and the equipment was disassembled and thoroughly cleaned. When the flood waters receded, nearly all of the equipment was
salvaged since there had been no
short circuiting from the water. On August 13, 2014,
The Walt Disney Company put WDWD and 22 other Radio Disney stations up for sale, in order to focus more on digital distribution of the Radio Disney network. Disney originally planned to temporarily shut down the station on September 26, 2014. However, the station remained on the air with Radio Disney programming until it was sold.
Salem Communications On February 25, 2015, Radio Disney Atlanta filed to sell WDWD to South Texas Broadcasting, Inc., a subsidiary of the
Salem Media Group. Salem bought the station for $2.75 million. The application to assign the station license was granted by the
U.S. Federal Communications Commission on April 13, 2015, and the purchase was consummated on May 7, 2015. On March 10, 2015, Salem Media CEO Ed Atsinger revealed that Salem would move the
WNIV/
WLTA programming to WDWD after the completion of the sale. On May 2, 2015, WDWD dropped Radio Disney and went silent, ahead of the sale's completion. On May 11, the station returned with a Christian talk format, branded as "Faith Talk 590", with programming from
Salem Radio Network. At one time, Salem owned five stations in Metro Atlanta, including WDWD. However,
WAFS 1190 AM has been sold to
Relevant Radio for its
Catholic radio network. And
WFSH 104.7 FM was sold to the
Educational Media Foundation for its
Air1 worship music network. ==References==