Paterson, New Jersey
Paterson ( ) is the largest city in and the county seat of Passaic County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey.brokered programming format. WPAT is owned by
Multicultural Broadcasting
Multicultural Broadcasting is a media company based in New York City founded by Chinese-American businessman Arthur Liu. It caters mostly to the Asian American community and owns television and radio stations in several of the top markets in mul ...
, and its studios are located in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
, in
Manhattan
Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...
's Financial District. The station's four transmitting towers are located in
Clifton, New Jersey
Clifton is a city in Passaic County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. Criss-crossed by several major highways, the city is a regional commercial hub for North Jersey and is a bedroom suburb of New York City in the New York Metropolitan Area. A ...
.
History
WPAT first went on the air in 1941, from studios at 7 Ellison Street in Paterson. In December 1949, it began broadcasting 24 hours a day with power increased to 5,000 watts using a directional antenna. Air personalities then included
John Henry Faulk
John Henry Faulk (August 21, 1913 – April 9, 1990) was an American storyteller and radio show host. His successful lawsuit against the entertainment industry helped to bring an end to the Hollywood blacklist.
Early life
John Henry Faulk ...
.
For many years, the station (along with its FM counterpart) would broadcast a
beautiful music
Beautiful music (sometimes abbreviated as BM, B/EZ or BM/EZ for "beautiful music/easy listening") is a mostly instrumental music format that was prominent in North American radio from the late 1950s through the 1980s. Easy listening, elevator mu ...
format under the slogan "Easy 93". WPAT was the essence of a mellow sound and feel; the requirement for different programming between the AM and FM was met simply by repeating the previous week's AM programs in a slightly different order on FM. Initially, the music was only instrumental versions of pop standards by artists like Mantovani,
Henry Mancini
Henry Mancini ( ; born Enrico Nicola Mancini, ; April 16, 1924 – June 14, 1994) was an American composer, conductor, arranger, pianist and flautist. Often cited as one of the greatest composers in the history of film, he won four Academy Award ...
,
Stan Kenton
Stanley Newcomb Kenton (December 15, 1911 – August 25, 1979) was an American popular music and jazz artist. As a pianist, composer, arranger and band leader, he led an innovative and influential jazz orchestra for almost four decades. Though K ...
,
Jackie Gleason
John Herbert Gleason (February 26, 1916June 24, 1987) was an American actor, comedian, writer, composer, and conductor known affectionately as "The Great One." Developing a style and characters from growing up in Brooklyn, New York, he was know ...
Ray Conniff
Joseph Raymond Conniff (November 6, 1916 – October 12, 2002) was an American bandleader and arranger best known for his Ray Conniff Singers during the 1960s.
Biography
Conniff was born November 6, 1916 in Attleboro, Massachusetts, United St ...
David Rose David Rose may refer to:
Business
* David Rose (real estate developer) (1892–1986), American real estate developer and philanthropist
* David L. Rose (born 1967), American business executive and scientist at MIT Media Lab
* David S. Rose (bor ...
and Ferrante & Teicher, among others. Some of the music bordered on light classical. The FM station was added in 1958.
The WPAT stations were purchased by
Capital Cities Communications
Capital Cities/ABC Inc. was an American media company. It was founded in 1985 when Capital Cities Communications purchased the much larger American Broadcasting Company. It eventually proposed a merger of equals with The Walt Disney Company and ...
in 1961. In the late 1960s the stations added several vocalists per hour. The vocalists were pop standards artists like Lettermen,
Frank Sinatra
Francis Albert Sinatra (; December 12, 1915 – May 14, 1998) was an American singer and actor. Nicknamed the " Chairman of the Board" and later called "Ol' Blue Eyes", Sinatra was one of the most popular entertainers of the 1940s, 1950s, and ...
,
Tony Bennett
Anthony Dominick Benedetto (born August 3, 1926), known professionally as Tony Bennett, is an American retired singer of traditional pop standards, big band, show tunes, and jazz. Bennett is also a painter, having created works under his birt ...
,
Patti Page
Clara Ann Fowler (November 8, 1927 – January 1, 2013), known professionally as Patti Page, was an American singer and actress. Primarily known for pop and country music, she was the top-charting female vocalist and best-selling female ar ...
, and others. Vocals were only very soft ones that had string arrangements and the stations steered clear of jazzy type vocals at that point. Throughout the 1960s, WPAT also resisted playing easy instrumental versions of baby boomer pop and rock and roll songs, however after WCBS-FM adopted a beautiful music format called the "Young Sound" which played a mix of easy listening instrumental versions of rock songs and some soft rock, WPAT began at least playing such songs in instrumental easy arrangements. In the 1970s, WPAT began integrating some baby boomer soft vocals such as
The Carpenters
The Carpenters (officially known as Carpenters) were an American vocal and instrumental duo consisting of siblings Karen (1950–1983) and Richard Carpenter (born 1946). They produced a distinct, soft, musical style, combining Karen's contr ...
,
Neil Diamond
Neil Leslie Diamond (born January 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter. He has sold more than 130 million records worldwide, making him one of the best-selling musicians of all time. He has had ten No. 1 singles on the Hot 100 and Adul ...
,
Dionne Warwick
Marie Dionne Warwick (; born December 12, 1940) is an American singer, actress, and television host.
Warwick ranks among the 40 biggest U.S. hit makers between 1955 and 1999, based on her chart history on ''Billboards Hot 100 pop singles ch ...
, and others, still playing one vocal per 15 minutes. In 1982, the stations began playing soft rock songs mixed into the format a couple of times an hour and cut back on pop standards artists and songs.
In 1985, Capital Cities announced that it would buy ABC. As a result of
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 jurisdicti ...
regulations at the time, the company decided to sell WPAT and WPAT-FM because ABC already owned WABC and
WPLJ
WPLJ (95.5 FM) is a non-commercial Christian adult contemporary music radio station licensed to New York City. It is owned by the Educational Media Foundation (EMF) and broadcasts EMF's flagship programming service, K-Love. WPLJ's transmi ...
in New York City. The WPAT stations would be sold to
Park Communications
Roy Hampton Park (15 September 1910 – 25 October 1993) was an American media executive and entrepreneur. He is known for creating the Duncan Hines brand of packaged food products, and for his television/radio/newspaper conglomerate, Park Commun ...
. By the early 1990s both frequencies of WPAT evolved to an
adult contemporary
Adult contemporary music (AC) is a form of radio-played popular music, ranging from 1960s vocal and 1970s soft rock music to predominantly ballad-heavy music of the present day, with varying degrees of easy listening, pop, soul, R&B, quie ...
adult contemporary
Adult contemporary music (AC) is a form of radio-played popular music, ranging from 1960s vocal and 1970s soft rock music to predominantly ballad-heavy music of the present day, with varying degrees of easy listening, pop, soul, R&B, quie ...
format. Around the same time, WPAT was sold to Heftel Broadcasting and switched to an automated classic salsa–tropical music format on March 26. Heftel tried buying the FM station but was narrowly outbid by SBS. Heftel bought WPAT with plans to sell it to
Multicultural Broadcasting
Multicultural Broadcasting is a media company based in New York City founded by Chinese-American businessman Arthur Liu. It caters mostly to the Asian American community and owns television and radio stations in several of the top markets in mul ...
and buying an FM station. Their plans were to not change formats to Spanish music for the long term but to broker the station for their eventual sale. Weeks later, the station would start adding ethnic and paid programming. The station continued running overflow WFAN sports in English as well as the public affairs shows in English. In January 1997, the station would become all-Korean brokering the station 18 hours a day to Radio Korea. The station kept Spanish programming a few hours a day plus the English public affairs shows on Sunday morning as well as overflow sports in English. This was done with intent of selling the station. By the next year, the station's ownership would change finally when its current owners, Multicultural Broadcasting, would buy the station in exchange for WNWK plus Multicultural was paid some cash for WNWK as well. (WNWK subsequently would become WCAA, then in 2009 would switch frequencies with WQXR-FM, New York. It is now known as WXNY-FM and broadcasts at 96.3 FM.) The new owners of WPAT would soon modify the station to its current paid ethnic programming format, moving Radio Korea to WZRC. Currently WPAT is the station that broadcasts
Colombia
Colombia (, ; ), officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country in South America with insular regions in North America—near Nicaragua's Caribbean coast—as well as in the Pacific Ocean. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the ...
La W
::La W'' is also used to refer to W Radio, the station where this programme airs, as well as other stations using the W Radio brand.''
''La W'' is a Colombian radio program, broadcast since 2003 on weekdays on W Radio and syndicated to statio ...
every morning, Monday through Friday, which features personality Julio Sánchez Cristo.
See also
*
List of radio stations in New Jersey
The following is a list of FCC-licensed radio stations in the U.S. state of New Jersey, which can be sorted by their call signs, frequencies, cities of license, licensees, and programming formats.
List of radio stations
Defunct
*KE2XCC
*W ...