WOL-FM On October 5, 1945, Cowles Broadcasting Company applied to the
Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for a
construction permit for a new FM station on 97.5 MHz. The FCC granted the permit on June 9, 1946. The permit was modified several times, with the station's frequency changing to 94.5 MHz, then 100.5 MHz, and finally 98.7 MHz. The station was originally given the
call sign WOL-FM, as the FM counterpart to
WOL (1260 AM). The FCC granted the station its first license on February 17, 1949.
WWDC-FM Capital Broadcasting decided to swap the licenses, call signs and facilities of the two AM stations and the two FM stations. WOL-FM's call sign would be changed to WWDC-FM while its frequency would be changed to 101.1 MHz. Simultaneously, WWDC-FM's call sign would be changed to WOL-FM while its frequency would be changed to 98.7 MHz. To prepare for these changes, Capital Broadcasting applied to the FCC for a construction permit on January 26, 1950, to change WOL-FM's frequency to 101.1 MHz. The call signs were swapped on the effective date of the sale, February 20, 1950. The FCC granted Capital Broadcasting a new license for the station, with the new call sign, for operation on the new frequency on August 26, 1952. WWDC-FM enjoyed success with the rock format in the 1980s. The station was #1 in men (
Arbitron) and was quite profitable. One of the premier album rock stations in the country, the disc jockey staff featured
Greaseman in the morning, Dusty Scott in midday, Steveski in afternoons and Kirk McEwen in the evening. With this lineup and format, WWDC-FM consistently ran in the 6s, dominating men in the nation's 7th largest market. The format was a combination of current rock releases along with rock tracks from the 1960s and 1970s. Other DJs ("Boss Jocks") during the 1980s included Adam "Smash" Smasher, Ernie Kyger (Ernie D'Kaye), Cerphe, Sandy Edwards, Buddy Rizer, Rich Levinson, Tim Shamble, YDB (Young Dave Brown), Sean Donohue (Rusty Brainpan), and Vinnie Brewster.
Alternative rock In the 90s and early aughts, WWDC's
playlist was typically current
hard rock, playing acts like
Foo Fighters and
Metallica. During the 1990s, the station began adding more
modern and alternative rock acts including
Smashing Pumpkins and
Stone Temple Pilots to compete with its chief rival,
WHFS-FM. WWDC changed to its current alternative rock format by 2005 after WHFS-FM's genre change to
tropical music as
WLZL. In 2007, the station was nominated by
Radio & Records for top alternative station in a top-25 market.
Ownership changes WWDC was among the last independently owned radio stations in the Washington market. In February 1998, parent company Capitol Broadcasting sold WWDC-FM and its AM sister station, WWDC (now
WQOF), for $72 million to Texas-based
Chancellor Media, which later was renamed AMFM. AMFM was acquired by
Clear Channel Communications, which now, as iHeartMedia, owns and operates six radio stations in Washington, D.C. WWDC's facilities were once located on Connecticut Avenue between
Dupont Circle and
Farragut Square in downtown Washington, D.C. The studios later moved to
Silver Spring, Maryland, and are now located at 1801 Rockville Pike in
Rockville, Maryland. By 2011, WWDC added
Aerosmith,
Led Zeppelin,
Black Sabbath,
Jimi Hendrix and
Pink Floyd back on the playlist, although they were played sparingly and the station was still not considered
active rock. Within a few years, those artists were dropped from the playlist.
Shock jocks WWDC advanced the careers of several famous morning radio personalities, sometimes referred to as "
shock jocks".
Howard Stern was the morning
drive time host from March 1981 to June 1982. When Stern left the station on June 29, 1982, it was rumored that he was fired because of his on-air prank of pretending to call
Air Florida airlines to book a flight to the 14th Street Bridge. That was one day after 78 people died, when
Air Florida Flight 90 crashed into the
Potomac River at the bridge. But nearly six months elapsed between the crash of
Air Florida 90 which occurred on January 13, 1982, and Stern's firing in late June. It is more likely that Stern was released because he had already signed a contract with
WNBC in New York City before his WWDC-FM contract ended. It is at WWDC-FM that Stern was first paired with news anchor
Robin Quivers. WWDC-FM is featured prominently in Stern's 1997
bio-pic Private Parts. Stern was replaced by
Doug Tracht, better known as the
Greaseman, who spent over ten years at the station, from August 2, 1982, to January 22, 1993, and returned to the station in April 2008. Tracht was let go again in October 2008 so the station could focus solely on music on weekends without his comedy bits. WWDC's current morning program is
Elliot In the Morning, led by
Elliot Segal. Since beginning his tenure at WWDC in 1999, Segal has been suspended and fined on several occasions for the show's sometimes controversial content; in October 2003, Clear Channel was fined $55,000 for the broadcast of reportedly indecent material during two episodes of the program in May 2002. In the first of the two broadcasts on May 7, 2002, a pair of sixteen-year-old students of
Bishop Denis J. O'Connell High School had phoned the show to participate in a contest, whose winners would receive a chance to become
cage dancers at an upcoming
Kid Rock concert. The two students—who assumed false names and claimed to be 18—discussed allegations of sexual activity at the school, goaded on by host Segal, including "graphic and explicit references to the sexual activities of the school's students and administrators" (such as oral sex). The next day, after learning that the two students had been suspended for the remarks, Segal criticized the school and its staff on-air, and proceeded to take further calls from O'Connell students that contained similar content. ==HD radio and former translator==