KEAD was the callsign for two defunct

American Forces Radio and Television Service The American Forces Network (AFN) is a government television and radio broadcast service the U.S. military provides to those stationed or assigned overseas. Headquartered at Fort George G. Meade, Maryland, AFN's broadcast operations, which i ...

radio station Radio broadcasting is transmission of audio (sound), sometimes with related metadata, by radio waves to radio receivers belonging to a public audience. In terrestrial radio broadcasting the radio waves are broadcast by a land-based radi ...

s on

Wake Island Wake Island ( mh, Ānen Kio, translation=island of the kio flower; also known as Wake Atoll) is a coral atoll in the western Pacific Ocean in the northeastern area of the Micronesia subregion, east of Guam, west of Honolulu, southeast of T ...

, an unorganized,

unincorporated territory Territories of the United States are sub-national administrative divisions overseen by the federal government of the United States. The various American territories differ from the U.S. states and tribal reservations as they are not sove ...

of the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

. On AM, the station carried a mix of free-form live programming hosted by military personnel and other workers stationed on the island, while on KEAD-FM , the station played pre-recorded easy-listening music off reel-to-reel tapes. The KEAD callsign was previously assigned to the

Civil Aeronautics Authority The Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) was an agency of the federal government of the United States, formed in 1938 and abolished in 1985, that regulated aviation services including scheduled passenger airline serviceStringer, David H."Non-Skeds: T ...

navigation service station based on the island. In 2011, some 9,000 vintage vinyl records provided by AFRTS to the station from the mid-1960s into the 1970s were discovered in the old studio in a restricted area of the

Wake Island Airfield Wake Island Airfield is a military air base located on Wake Island, which is known for the Battle of Wake Island during World War II. It is owned by the U.S. Air Force and operated by the 611th Air Support Group. The runway can be used for emer ...

terminal building.

References

Defunct radio stations in the United States Wake Island American Forces Network {{US-radio-station-stub