Topic summary
WPHI-FM

WPHI-FM (103.9 MHz) is a commercial radio station licensed to Jenkintown, Pennsylvania, and serving the Philadelphia metropolitan area. The station is owned by Audacy, Inc., simulcasting an all-news radioformat with co-owned KYW (1060 AM). Its studios are located in Audacy's corporate headquarters in Center City, Philadelphia, and its transmitter is in the Roxborough neighborhood.
This station began broadcasting as WIBF on November 1, 1960, and was owned for 32 years by the Fox family. It had a variety of formats in its early years but in the mid-1970s settled on weekday daytime Christian and Jewish programming and programming for ethnic communities in foreign languages at night and on weekends. The Fox family sold the station in 1992 to Jarad Broadcasting, which switched the format to modern rock as a simulcast of the company's WDRE in Garden City, New York, one of seven stations nationally that formed the "Underground Network". The simulcast arrangement was unwound in 1995, and the WDRE call sign moved to Philadelphia in 1996 with the station becoming a locally based modern rocker.
Radio One acquired WDRE in late 1996 and relaunched the station as WPHI-FM "Philly 103.9" with an urban contemporary format in February 1997. WPHI shifted to rhythmic Top 40 as "The Beat" in 2002 before switching formats and frequencies with 100.3 MHz in 2005. This station then became WPPZ-FM "Praise 103.9", an urban gospel station. WPPZ's programming moved to 107.9 MHz in 2016, and 103.9 again became an urban station as WPHI-FM.
In 2020, Radio One swapped four stations to Entercom, predecessor of Audacy, in exchange for the company's cluster in Charlotte, North Carolina. On November 23, Entercom began programming this frequency as a simulcast of KYW's all-news format.