WPTX

WPTX (1690 kHz) is a commercial AM radio station licensed to Lexington Park, Maryland, and serving Southern Maryland and the Northern Neck. It is owned by Somar Communications and carries a soft oldies/adult standards radio format, known as "Easy Favorites".
WPTX is Maryland's first and only AM expanded band radio station, having moved to the expanded band from 920 kHz in 1998. It operates with 10,000 watts daytime and reduces power to 1,000 at night to protect other stations on 1690 AM. Programming is also heard on 250-watt FM translator W264DR at 100.7 MHz in Lexington Park.
History.
Patuxent Radio, Inc., owned by World War II pilot Jack Daugherty and businessman Paul Chapman, obtained the construction permit for a new radio station, to operate during the day with 1,000 watts on 1570 kHz, on October 15, 1952. St. Mary's County suddenly went from zero local stations to two. Competitor WKIK (1370 AM) in Leonardtown signed on January 7. WPTX followed on February 4. Daugherty had started WPTX in part because he felt Lexington Park needed its own civil institutions, having found resentment in his dealings in the county seat of Leonardtown. In the early years of WPTX, Daugherty's 7-year-old son Tom was often let in by one of the disc jockeys to spin big band records on the station.
In June of that year, just four months after going on the air, Patuxent Radio applied to move WPTX to 920 kHz with 500 watts, remaining a daytime-only station; the Federal Communications Commission approved the change in February 1954, making the move two months later and increasing its coverage area. Majority control changed hands four times in the next five years, ending when James S. Beattie became the sole owner of WPTX in 1959 and moved the station's studios to the Lexington Park, where they remained until 1968.
Key Broadcasting Corporation became the fifth owner of WPTX in six years when it purchased the station in 1960. Six years later, Key filed to upgrade the station to 5,000 watts and begin nighttime service with 1,000 watts; the FCC granted the application in February 1968, and the upgrade took effect in 1971. 1976 saw WPTX expand to the FM dial with the start-up of WMDM-FM 97.7; the AM station shifted to exclusively carrying a middle of the road format coinciding with the launch.
In 1988, Key Broadcasting sold WPTX and WMDM to Sconnix Broadcasting as part of a $25 million deal to purchase Key's Baltimore stations, WBMD and WQSR. Sconnix sold the Lexington Park outlets to Emmet Broadcasting for $1.2 million months later. After WKIK, a longtime country outlet, closed in 1992, WPTX flipped to country; WMDM-FM would begin simulcasting it the next year. Emmet would sell the pair in 1996 when he sought to move near his family in Kentucky; Steve Garchik acquired both stations. WMDM-FM was split off again with separate programming later that year, and the AM station moved from country to talk.
When the AM band was expanded to end at 1700 kHz instead of 1600, WPTX took advantage. It obtained a new license for 1690 kHz, gave it the WMDM call letters, and moved its programming there from 920 on July 15, 1998, retaining its talk format. The call letters were changed back to WPTX in 2000 after the 920 kHz license was formally surrendered; a year later, Roy Robertson, owner of WSMD-FM and WKIK-FM, bought WPTX and WMDM. The talk programming was replaced with sports after the new acquisitions were off the air for 26 days.