WAMO 660: История питтсбургской радиостанции

WAMO (660 kHz) is a commercial AM radio station licensed to Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania, and serving the Pittsburgh metropolitan area. It broadcasts an urban contemporary radio format, is owned by the Martz Communications Group and is operated by Audacy, Inc., under a local marketing agreement (LMA). Its studios and AM transmitter are located in Braddock, east of Pittsburgh. By day, WAMO is powered at 1,400 watts. To protect the nighttime signal of Class A station WFAN in New York City on the same frequency, WAMO is a daytimer, required to go off the air at night. Programming is also heard on 250 watt FM translator W297BU (107.3 MHz) in Pittsburgh. It uses the FM dial position in its moniker WAMO 107.3.

The station signed on the air on August 25, 1960. Initially, the station broadcast on 1470 kHz in Portage, Pennsylvania, halfway between Johnstown and Altoona, under the call sign WWML. It operated as a daytime only station. It saw numerous changes in format (usually between country and oldies) and call sign; it was variously known as WWML, WRML, In 1990, 1470 finally received permission from the Federal Communications Commission to operate at night with a limited power of 88 watts. Though successful financially in its earlier years, the station and its FM sister, then known as WZGO, experienced a sharp decline during the mid 1980s, as did the local economy, in part due to the collapse of the region's steel producing and coal mining industries.

Under FCC rules which permit a station owner to move a daytime only station and change its frequency, WFJY was relocated to the Pittsburgh area with a new frequency and city of license around 2004. On 660, the station first signed on with the call letters WCIX, before changing to WPYT. On June 3, 2011, the station changed its call sign to WAMO, marking the return of the callsign and format after two years. This is WAMO's fourth incarnation in Pittsburgh, as it originally broadcast on 860 AM, later with a simulcast on 105.9 FM before being moved to 106.7 in 1996. In January 2013, WAMO was added to BDS' Rhythmic Airplay panel as an indicator reporter, but is not considered a monitored reporter because it is not rated in Nielsen Audio (as Martz is a non subscriber) and in part due to being an AM daytimer with an FM translator. This occurred in spite of the station's primary emphasis on R&B/Hip Hop material. That changed by 2017 when it became a monitored R&B/Hip Hop reporter in both BDS and Mediabase. BDS then returned WAMO back to the Rhythmic panel as a monitored reporter in February 2019, due to a adjustment in its musical direction.

On June 25, 2019, at 11 a. m., WAMO changed formats from rhythmic contemporary (which continued on WBZZ HD3 and W261AX) to urban adult contemporary, branded as "107.3 The Beat"; the branding referred to WAMO's new FM translator, W297BU (107.3). On October 16, 2020, WAMO announced that the "WAMO 100" hip hop programming would move to 107.3 on November 2, marking the fourth FM frequency to carry the "WAMO" brand and the return of the hip hop format to the 660 frequency; W261AX was concurrently repurposed as an FM translator for KDKA (1020 AM). On March 22, 2022, it was announced that Audacy would purchase the WAMO intellectual property, and begin operating the station on April 4 via a local marketing agreement. On November 18, 2022, Martz announced that it would donate the WAMO license to Pittsburgh Public Media, owner of WZUM and WZUM FM. Following the donation's completion, the urban contemporary format will only be heard on W297BU and on the HD2 channel of Audacy owned WDSY FM; the move followed the expiration of a four year window requiring W297BU to operate as a WAMO translator.