page_title: WBAL (AM)
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: WBAL (AM) / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Former logo of the radio station WBAL.
context_page_description: WBAL is a commercial AM radio station licensed to Baltimore, Maryland and owned by the broadcasting division of the Hearst Corporation. Airing a News/Talk radio format, WBAL broadcasts on a Class A clear-channel frequency, with 50,000 watts from a transmitter facility in Randallstown, Maryland. Listeners in and around Baltimore can also hear the station on FM translator station W268BA at 101.5 MHz.
  The station shares its studios and offices with sister stations WBAL-TV and WIYY on Television Hill in Baltimore's Woodberry neighborhood. WBAL and WIYY are the only two radio stations owned by Hearst, which is primarily a publishing and television company, also co-owned with the television station; they are also part of a triopoly.
  WBAL is non-directional by day but uses a directional antenna at night to protect the other Class A stations on 1090 AM, KAAY in Little Rock and XEPRS in Rosarito, Mexico. With a good radio, WBAL's nighttime signal can be heard in much of Eastern North America, reaching as far as Finland, Sweden, Nova Scotia and Bermuda.
context_section_description: WBAL began broadcasting after being dedicated on November 2, 1925, as a subsidiary of the Consolidated Gas Electric Light and Power Company, a predecessor of Constellation Energy. WBAL's initial broadcasting studio was located at the utility's offices on Lexington Street.  It was an affiliate of the NBC Blue Network. On January 12, 1935, with radio becoming more commercialized, there was little justification for a public service company to own a radio station.  WBAL was sold to the Hearst-controlled American Radio News Corporation, which operated it along with two daily newspapers, The Baltimore News-Post and The Baltimore American (later merged as the Baltimore News-American).
  In the 1930s, WBAL became the flagship station for the international broadcast of radio evangelist G. E. Lowman, whose shows originated in Baltimore until 1959. During the 1960s, WBAL had a full service Middle Of The Road music format stressing personality and news.  The station played a mix of standards with some softer songs from the Top 40.
  By the early 1970s, the station had a full-service adult contemporary music format with the exception of weekday evenings, where the station aired talk programming.
  Among its personalities during that period were program host Jay Grayson, Harley Brinsfield, who had a long-running Saturday night jazz music program, The Harley Show, and White House-accredited newsman Galen Fromme. In the early 1980s, WBAL began running talk shows evenings and overnights, and continued to play some music during the day. Music gradually decreased and in the fall of 1985, with WBAL transitioning to its current news-talk format, winning 19 national Edward R. Murrow Awards since then, the most of any local U.S. radio station.  Since the mid-1990s, the station has become increasingly conservative, both in its on-air personalities and its editorial disposition.
  In 2010, WBAL switched its morning and afternoon drive time shows to an all-news format, titled Maryland's Morning News and Afternoon News Journal respectively. (The shows has since been renamed to Maryland's News Now and later to "WBAL News Now.") The all-news blocks include national newscasts from ABC News every 30 minutes.  Previously, the national feed had been provided by CBS at the top of each hour until 2014.  Also in 2014, the station was re-branded as WBAL News Radio 1090, to better reflect its status as Maryland's radio news leader.
  In addition to its analog 1090 kHz signal, WBAL is repeated on WIYY-HD2, a digital subchannel of WIYY's HD Radio signal.
caption: Former logo of the radio station
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