WTMJ (AM)

WTMJ (620 kHz) is a commercial AM radio station in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Owned by Good Karma Brands, the station has a news/talk radio format. Its sign-on dates back to 1922 and for most of its history it was owned by ''The Milwaukee Journal'' newspaper. On weekdays, it airs news blocks during drive time, local talk shows in middays, sports in the evening and syndicated shows in late nights. It is the flagship station for Milwaukee Brewers baseball and Milwaukee Bucks basketball.

By day, it transmits 50,000 watts, the maximum for commercial AM radio stations. At night, to avoid interference to other stations, it reduces power to 10,000 watts. In addition, it broadcasts on 250-watt FM translator W277CV at 103.3 MHz.

History

WCAY and WKAF

The station was first licensed, with the sequentially assigned call letters WCAY, on . It was owned by the Kesselman O'Driscoll Company, a music house located at 517-519 Grand Avenue (now Wisconsin Avenue) in Milwaukee. It was initially authorized to broadcast on the "entertainment" wavelength of 360 meters (833 kHz). On May 24, 1923, WCAY was reassigned to 1150 kHz. The next year ownership was transferred to the Milwaukee Civic Broadcasting Association.

The station license was briefly allowed to lapse in 1925, but it was quickly relicensed as WKAF to the WKAF Broadcasting Co., located at 130 Second Street. The station was now jointly owned by Kesselman-O'Driscoll Co., the Hotel Antlers (the studio location), and station engineer H. L. Ford. WKAF's first regular broadcast was held on October 20, 1925.

WTMJ

On April 20, 1927, WKAF was purchased by ''The Milwaukee Journal'' for $16,350. The ''Journal'' changed the call sign to WTMJ on May 10 to reflect the newspaper's name. Station facilities were upgraded, including the building of a new transmitter site in Brookfield, west of Milwaukee. The new WTMJ also affiliated with the NBC Red Network.

The ''Journal'' already had extensive experience with radio broadcasting. On May 1, 1922, it had sponsored the debut program on WAAK, Milwaukee's first radio station, which was owned by the local division of the Gimbel's department store chain. On January 24, 1925, the newspaper entered into an agreement as a joint, and dominant, partner in the operation of Marquette University's station, WHAD, which limited the university's programming to just one and one-half hour on Friday evenings. The newspaper's operations at WHAD ended on August 15, 1927, with the university returning to full responsibility for the station. WTMJ aired a full service format featuring a mixture of music, news, talk and local personalities along with sports play-by-play, as well as dramas, comedies and other programs from NBC.

WTMJ made its debut broadcast on July 25, 1927. That day's broadcast featured music by the WTMJ Orchestra and included a remote broadcast featuring Bill Carlsen's orchestra. (Carlsen was later hired by WTMJ and went on to become Wisconsin's most widely known radio and television weather forecaster.) On September 11, 1927, WTMJ was assigned to 1020 kHz. WTMJ also began broadcasting University of Wisconsin Badgers football games that year.

AM 620

On November 11, 1928, as part of a major nationwide allocation under the provisions of the Federal Radio Commission's General Order 40, WTMJ was reassigned to its current frequency of 620 kHz. In November 1929, WTMJ broadcast a Green Bay Packers game for the first time.

WTMJ was indirectly involved with the installation of the first directional antenna by a radio station in the United States. In 1929 a joint operation in Clearwater, Florida, WFLA-WSUN, was also assigned to 620 kHz. WTMJ immediately complained that at the initial power allocation the Florida stations were causing significant interference to WTMJ's coverage, especially at night. WFLA-WSUN turned to the engineering community to determine whether a then-theoretical concept of a directional antenna could be installed to reduce the Florida station's signal toward Milwaukee. This led to the successful development in 1932 of the first modern AM directional antenna system. (WFLA moved to 970 kHz in 1941, with WSUN taking its place in Tampa, followed by the current-day WDAE)

Radio City Studios

In 1942, a new facility, ''The Milwaukee Journals Radio City, opened for WTMJ and its FM sister station, W55M (later WMFM and WTMJ-FM), in addition to the yet-to-come WTMJ-TV. An article in the trade magazine Broadcasting reported that the building was the "first ever designed to house all three types of broadcasting."

A 1944 survey by ''The Milwaukee Journal'' found WTMJ to be the most popular radio station in Milwaukee, especially for local morning show ''Top of the Morning'' and NBC radio's ''The Hour of Charm'' in evenings. WTMJ had gross advertising revenue of over $1.2 million.
Gordon Hinkley began a near three-decade career with WTMJ in 1951, starting as a staff announcer and host of the Sunday morning beautiful music show ''Invitation to Beauty''.

Beginning in 1961, WTMJ promoted Hinkley to host its morning drive program ''Top O' the Morning'' and call-in talk show ''Ask Your Neighbor''. ''Top O' the Morning'' was the highest rated morning show in Milwaukee for five straight Arbitron surveys from summer 1977 to summer 1978. Hinkley hosted ''Top O' the Morning'' until 1984.

Sports

In 1971, WTMJ began broadcasting Milwaukee Brewers games. WEMP broadcast the inaugural Brewers season the previous year. WTMJ temporarily lost the Brewers to rival WISN in 1981 and 1982.

Having been the most popular station in local Arbitron ratings, WTMJ tied Top 40 station WKTI in the top ratings spot in by spring 1990.

Switch to News/Talk

By the summer of 1990, most of the music shows had been deleted. WTMJ began to be listed as a news/talk station in the Arbitron ratings.
In 1993, WTMJ hired two new talk show hosts, liberal Jay Marvin and conservative Charlie Sykes. Sykes joined WTMJ from rival WISN. Marvin left for WLS in Chicago after seven months.

Also in 1993, WTMJ temporarily lost the rights to Wisconsin Badgers sports broadcasts because an employee submitted the bid for the rights minutes after the deadline had passed. But WTMJ eventually signed a new Wisconsin Badgers contract with Learfield that year.

Power increase

WTMJ was granted permission in 1995 to upgrade to 50,000 watts days and 10,000 watts nights from a new directional antenna. It uses a six-tower array, located in Union Grove, south of Milwaukee.

In November 1997, WTMJ switched its national news provider from CBS to ABC. WTMJ returned to CBS on October 1, 2001.
WTMJ logo from 2001 to 2013.

In 2002, Sykes and fellow WTMJ host Jeff Wagner led a campaign to recall Milwaukee County Executive Tom Ament, who was embroiled in scandal for abusing the county pension system; Ament controversially retired at the end of February 2002, rather than resign.

In 2013, WTMJ made changes to its programming and management. In March, Journal Communications fired program director Joe Scialfa, who had been with the station for 14 years beginning as producer for the Charlie Sykes show. That November, WTMJ elected not to renew its contract with the University of Wisconsin, thus ending over eight decades of broadcasting Wisconsin Badgers sports by 2014. WOKY and WRIT became the new Milwaukee affiliates for the Wisconsin sports network effective in the 2014–15 season.

Changes in ownership

Journal Communications and the E. W. Scripps Company announced on July 30, 2014, that the two companies would merge to create a new broadcast company under the E.W. Scripps Company name that will own the two companies' broadcast properties, including WTMJ, WTMJ-TV, and WKTI-FM. The deal separated the WTMJ stations from the ''Journal Sentinel'' after nine decades, as the two companies' newspapers were spun off into a separate company under the Journal Media Group name (that company merged with Gannett

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