WARJ is a

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

Shawsville, Virginia Shawsville is a census-designated place (CDP) in Montgomery County, Virginia, United States. The population was 1,310 at the 2010 census. It is part of the Blacksburg– Christiansburg Metropolitan Statistical Area which encompasses all of ...

, broadcasting the

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 to

Roanoke, Virginia Roanoke ( ) is an independent city in the U.S. state of Virginia. At the 2020 census, the population was 100,011, making it the 8th most populous city in the Commonwealth of Virginia and the largest city in Virginia west of Richmond. It is lo ...

and the

New River Valley The New River Valley is a region along the New River in Southwest Virginia in the United States. It is usually defined as the counties of Montgomery (including the towns of Blacksburg and Christiansburg), Pulaski, Floyd, and Giles and the ...

. WARJ is owned by the

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 ...

History

The station signed on in 2013 as WBZS. From its sign-on, the station was

leased A lease is a contractual arrangement calling for the user (referred to as the ''lessee'') to pay the owner (referred to as the ''lessor'') for the use of an asset. Property, buildings and vehicles are common assets that are leased. Industrial ...

by owner George S. Flinn, Jr., to Three Daughters Media, which simulcast the

talk Talk may refer to: Communication * Communication, the encoding and decoding of exchanged messages between people * Conversation, interactive communication between two or more people * Lecture, an oral presentation intended to inform or instruct ...

format of

WIQO-FM WIQO-FM is a News/Talk formatted broadcast radio station licensed to Forest, Virginia, serving Lynchburg, Bedford, and Buena Vista in Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southe ...

Lynchburg. WBZS entered into a three-year lease to Community Media Group, owner of

adult album alternative Adult album alternative (also triple-A, AAA, or adult alternative) is a radio format. See pages 9 and 10Mills, Joshua. "A New Radio Music Format: Rock for Prosperous Adults" New York Times, Feb 28 1994, p. 2. ProQuest. Web. Accessed September 4, 2 ...

WVMP, on December 1, 2016. On February 1, 2018, the AAA format moved exclusively to WBZS, which rebranded as "102.5 The Mountain". Upon the lease ending on December 1, 2019, the AAA programming moved back to WVMP. In April 2020, Flinn donated the station's signal to air a noncommercial

news/talk Talk radio is a radio format containing discussion about topical issues and consisting entirely or almost entirely of original spoken word content rather than outside music. Most shows are regularly hosted by a single individual, and often featur ...

format focusing specifically on coverage of the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...

in the

. The station was led by WVMP's former general manager and a volunteer staff, with on-air hosts

remote work Remote work, also called work from home (WFH), work from anywhere, telework, remote job, mobile work, and distance work is an employment arrangement in which employees do not commute to a central place of work, such as an office building, ware ...

ing from

home studio Home recording is the practice of recording sound in a private home instead of a professional recording studio. A studio set up for home recording is called a home studio or project studio. Home recording is widely practiced by voice actors, narrat ...

s. Three months later, he sold the station and eight others to the

for $3.4 million. Upon the sale being consummated on October 29, 2020, the call letters were changed to WARJ, as the station picked up EMF's

network.

References

External links

* {{Religious Radio Stations in Virginia 2013 establishments in Virginia Radio stations established in 2013

ARJ ARJ (Archived by Robert Jung) is a software tool designed by Robert K. Jung for creating high-efficiency data compression, compressed file archives. ARJ is currently on version 2.86 for MS-DOS and 3.20 for Microsoft Windows and supports 16-bit, 3 ...

Educational Media Foundation radio stations Air1 radio stations