WGVU (AM)

WGVU is a radio station that serves the Greater Grand Rapids, Michigan area. The main broadcast frequency is 1480 kHz, which is licensed to Kentwood, Michigan, a Grand Rapids suburb. It is simulcast on WGVS 850 kHz, which is licensed to Muskegon. The station's current format is oldies music. Both WGVU and WGVS are owned and operated by Grand Valley State University, along with WGVU-FM and WGVS-FM (which feature a talk/jazz format). Additionally the station's audio simulcasts on the digital subchannels of WGVU/WGVK on channel 35.4/52.4, which features scrolling television schedules along with visual song/artist information for the radio audio.
History.
1480 kHz went on the air as commercial station WMAX By the late 1950s and early 1960s it was the leading Top 40 music station in Grand Rapids. Afterward the station played mostly middle of the road and adult contemporary music (and briefly used the WAFT calls for a time in the late 1960s), although WMAX did briefly return to a Top 40-style presentation from about 1972 to 1975 as "GOOD MAX MUSIC 1480." The station dropped its music format in January 1976 for a news/talk format. WMAX NewsRadio 1480 operated as a locally produced all-news radio format from 1976 to 1984, with a staff of 11 reporters. Later the station dropped the news/talk format for gospel, then contemporary Christian music. For many years, WMAX was the Grand Rapids radio home for Detroit Red Wings hockey. WMAX changed transmitter locations (adding a directional night-time signal) and was reassigned from Grand Rapids to Kentwood in 1984.
The station went silent until July 4, 1991, when it became branded as "All-American NewsTalk 1480 WMAX." The AM station operated out of the Witte Travel Building at 3250 28th Street S.E., near Shaffer Avenue. The station simulcasted the cable-TV network audio signal of the CNN Headline News Network (later, just 'HLN'). At the :24 and :54 marks of each hour during morning drive, noon hour and afternoon drive, 1480 WMAX would cut in with a six-minute locally produced newscast during morning- and afternoon- drives, before resuming the simulcast at the top or bottom of the hour. Dave Stanley was the program director and James Gemmell was the news director. The owners sold the station in early 1992 to Grand Valley State University. Grand Valley returned it to the air as WGVU on May 22, 1992.
Since returning to the air, it has served as a public broadcaster and is a National Public Radio affiliate, with NPR News on the hour (although the station does not air NPR long-form news programming such as "Morning Edition" and "All Things Considered", which were dropped from the schedule with the format change from news/talk to oldies). In 1998, Grand Valley took control of WGVS 850 in Muskegon and converted it into a simulcast of WGVU.
Formerly the station broadcast in AM stereo for years before converting to the newer HD Radio format; WTKG is the only other AM station in the area with an HD signal.
On August 27, 2009, WGVU and WGVS flipped to the oldies format—a first for a public radio station. The station's playlist encompasses hits from the mid-1950s through the mid-1970s and features many seldom-heard songs not typically played on commercial oldies stations, including some titles by local Michigan artists. Big band, traditional pop, and easy listening songs from the 1940s through the '70s are featured on Sunday mornings during the "Sunday Morning Standards" program. Also airing on Sundays is the "West Michigan Top 40" show, which counts down the songs on a historic local record chart from a given date.
Victor Lundberg, a newscaster at WMAX 1480, had a Top 10 hit on the "Billboard" Hot 100 in 1967 with a spoken-word piece titled "An Open Letter to My Teenage Son." The WMAX calls were originally granted for a station in Ann Arbor in 1922, and now belong to a Catholic-formatted AM station in Bay City, Michigan (in addition, 96.1 FM licensed to Holland, Michigan and serving the Grand Rapids market operates as WMAX-FM, but it has no relationship to 1480 AM).
The WGVU 1480 AM towers are located at Kalamazoo Avenue and M-6.