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The station first went on the air in 1924 on 950 kHz as WGBS, named after and broadcasting from its owner, Gimbel's department store. It moved to 860 kHz sometime around 1927 , and to 600 around 1930 , settling on 1180 around 1931 . It was bought by William Randolph Hearst in 1932, and by 1934 had adopted its present callsign (named after Hearst's '''I'''nternational '''N'''ews '''S'''ervice). It changed its frequency from 1180 to 1010 on March 29 , 1941 as part of NARBA . Crosley Broadcasting purchased the station from Hearst in 1946 . Crosley sold the station in [953 to the Gotham Broadcasting Corp. In 1954 under owner new ownership WINS became one of the first stations to play Rock And Roll , and featured famous and influential Disk Jockey s such as Alan Freed and Murray (the K) Kaufman . In the early-1960s WINS-AM and WABC (AM) were the top two Top 40 stations in the New York City area. But by 1963, WMCA briefly became the top-rated top 40 station in the Big Apple before it was quickly overtaken by WABC, and WINS consequently saw a decline of ratings over the next two years, normally trailing WMCA and WABC by some distance. In 1965 under owner Westinghouse it changed Format , becoming one of the first all-news stations in the United States -which was appropriate considering what the call letters (see above) stand for. As with other Westinghouse-owned News stations, WINS usually can be easily identified by a distinctive Teletype Sound Effect playing in the background (some other stations later dropped this, but WINS has kept it) and the slogan, "WINS-Ten Ten New York, Group W Westinghouse Broadcasting Company, Serving New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut with All News All The Time." They later introduced the slogan, "You give us 22 minutes, we'll give you the world." Other features of the news radio station include "Traffic and Transit on the 1's", and literally a "beep" at the start of every half hour. WINS has consistently ranked as one of the highest-rated stations in the New York City area, usually beating its all-news competitor WCBS-AM (although both are now owned by CBS). EXTERNAL LINKS
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