WAIW is a

Contemporary Worship Contemporary worship is a form of Christian worship that emerged within Western evangelical Protestantism in the 20th century. It was originally confined to the charismatic movement, but is now found in a wide range of churches, including many w ...

formatted

broadcast Broadcasting is the distribution of audio or video content to a dispersed audience via any electronic mass communications medium, but typically one using the electromagnetic spectrum ( radio waves), in a one-to-many model. Broadcasting began ...

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 radio ...

licensed to

Winchester, Virginia Winchester is the most north western independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia. It is the county seat of Frederick County, although the two are separate jurisdictions. The Bureau of Economic Analysis combines the city of Winchester wit ...

. WAIW is owned and operated by

Educational Media Foundation Educational Media Foundation (formerly EMF Broadcasting, abbreviated EMF) is an American nonprofit Christian media ministry based in Franklin, Tennessee, a suburb of Nashville. EMF is the parent company of K-LOVE and Air1—the world's largest ...

Coverage area

With the station's transmitter located atop a mountain, WAIW's signal can be heard throughout the

Shenandoah Valley The Shenandoah Valley () is a geographic valley and cultural region of western Virginia and the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia. The valley is bounded to the east by the Blue Ridge Mountains, to the west by the eastern front of the Ridge- ...

, Central and

Northern Virginia Northern Virginia, locally referred to as NOVA or NoVA, comprises several counties and independent cities in the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. It is a widespread region radiating westward and southward from Washington, D.C. Wit ...

, the

Eastern Panhandle The Eastern Panhandle is the eastern of the two panhandles in the U.S. state of West Virginia; the other is the Northern Panhandle. It is a small stretch of territory in the northeast of the state, bordering Maryland and Virginia. Some sources a ...

and

Potomac Highlands The Potomac Highlands of West Virginia (or just the Potomac Highlands) () centers on five West Virginian counties (Grant, Hampshire, Hardy, Mineral, and Pendleton) in the upper Potomac River watershed in the western portion of the state's Eastern P ...

West Virginia West Virginia is a state in the Appalachian, Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States.The Census Bureau and the Association of American Geographers classify West Virginia as part of the Southern United States while the Bur ...

, parts of Central and

Western Maryland upright=1.2, An enlargeable map of Maryland's 23 counties and one independent city Western Maryland, also known as the Maryland Panhandle, is the portion of the U.S. state of Maryland that typically consists of Washington, Allegany, and Garret ...

and Metro

Washington, D.C. ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...

History

Former owner Centennial Broadcasting filed an agreement with the

Federal Communications Commission The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that regulates communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable across the United States. The FCC maintains jurisdiction ...

(FCC) on October 6, 2020, to sell the former WINC-FM to

(EMF) for $1.75 million. WINC-FM's existing music programming moved to the co-owned WXBN (105.5 FM) and WZFC (104.9 FM) ahead of the sale; Centennial also retained the rights to the WINC callsign and branding. On November 18, 2020, EMF filed to operate WINC-FM as a non-commercial station upon closing. The sale closed on December 29, 2020. At 2:37 p.m. that same day, WINC-FM abruptly signed off and around an hour later, at 3:29 p.m., the station signed back on IDing with the callsign WLWX and airing EMF's

Air1 Air1 is an American Christian radio network. Owned by the Educational Media Foundation (EMF), it primarily broadcasts contemporary worship music, and is a sister to the EMF's K-Love network. History In 1986, KLRD began broadcasting Christia ...

network. Sister station WAIW in Wheaton, Illinois and WLWX "traded" callsigns on January 11, 2021. The application to operate the station as non-commercial was approved one day later.

References

External links

Air1 OnlineFCC History Cards for WAIW
* {{Air 1 1946 establishments in Virginia Air1 radio stations Radio stations established in 1946 AIW Winchester, Virginia