Wall

HISTORY

WALL signed on in 1942 . Initially they employed a popular music format with alot of local news. The station was very successful. The station maintained a news intensive Middle Of The Road format through the 1960's and by the 1970's they evolved to more of a Top 40 format. In 1979, the station along with an FM station was purchased by media mogul Robert F.X. Sillerman and legendary New York air personality Bruce Morrow aka Cousin Brucie. The FM station took a Solid Gold Oldies/Adult Contemporary format while WALL changed to an Adult Standards format, playing the music of the 40's and non rock hits of the 50's through the 70's. By the mid 1980's WALL recaptured some of the magic of its heyday by switching to an oldies-based format, heavy on local news and community involvement. It also brought major sports coverage to the Hudson Valley with its broadcasting of Mets baseball, Giants Football, and Rangers hockey. It was at this point that WALL was able to attract some legendary air talent, and the largest audience it had seen since the early 1970's. A highlight in the station's history occured on the weekend of August 2nd/3rd, 1987 when the station celebrated its "45th" Anniversary...the station looked back to its past and reunited air personalities that weekend including Cousin Brucie , Howard Hoffman, Randy West, Gene Pelc, Alex Miller, Jim Frey, Jeffrey Isaac, Dick Wells, John Moultrie, Jim Pappas and Al Larson . There was no "50th Celebration"....by 1988, Orange & Rockland Utilities had purchased the station along with sister WKGL (now WRRV ) and many of the air personalities and programming folks were no longer at the station. WALL evolved into a News and Talk format by late that year. The talk shows were satellite except for the morning and afternoon show.

In the early 1990's Crystal Broadcasting (headed by Rob Dyson) purchased WALL and its fM station (now WRRV along with 97.7 WCZX (which they only manged until buying them outright in 1996). The station continued with a News and Talk format with a combination of local talk and satellite talk.

The aging demographics of pop standards by the late 1990s led Crystal Radio Group (the spun-off Dyson family unit) to explore changing its format on sister station WEOK . In the summer of 1999, the decision was made to dissolve the format of WEOK into WALL in Middletown and to launch a slightly different talk format on the two frequencies. On September 6, 1999, WEOK dumped pop standards and joined with WALL to simulcast talk.

The stationd became known as "News-Talk 13", an amaglam of Rush Limbaugh, Dr. Laura, Poughkeepsie-centric local host Larry Hughes, ESPN Radio, and assorted other programming. Complaints that programming leaned too much towards one area or another, plus the high numbers of WABC from New York City, doomed this format.

Aurora Broadcasting would buy WALL and WEOK along with all of Crystal's other stations in the Spring of 2000. Management though remained the same and all the stations with the exception of WALL and WEOK stayed the same.

In August 2000 the stations became "1340/1390 ESPN Radio", the expansion of the relatively successful night/weekend ESPN programming to full-time with assorted sports rights (New York Yankees, New York Giants, Marist College basketball). This was a minor success though New York City affiliate came along in WEPN. Then in March of 2002 Cumulus would buy all the stations owned by Aurora Broadcasting. As a result the former Crystal Broadcasting management team was replaced with Cumulus management. As a result Cumulus Management made changes in all of the stations. WEOK and WALL were the first to be changed.

In September 2002 "El Ritmo", the first Spanish-language station in he Hudson Valley was launched. By then the pro sports games would move to FM stations in the group. They were a Spanish Hot AC format with satellite programming at night and most of the weekend and a live local morning and afternoon show. This idea was said to be a bit ahead of its time which proved to be a hard sell to Cumulus Media (who bought WEOK from Aurora Broadcasting earlier that year, who had bought it from Crystal the year in 2000). In March of 2005 this format was abruptly ended and Radio Disney would be put on the station, which ironically is what WEOK and WALL nearly flipped to when leaving ESPN Radio.

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Wall