WETA is a noncommercial, public radio station in Washington, DC Washington, D.C. , formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, the District, or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States, founded on July 16, 1790. The City of Washington was originally a separate municipality within the Territory of Columbia until an act of Congress in 1871 effectively merged the City and the broadcasting a classical music format on 90.9 FM. Its studios are located in Arlington, Virginia Arlington County is a county of about 210,000 residents in the Commonwealth of Virginia. It is located directly across the Potomac River to the southwest of Washington, D.C. Formerly part of the District of Columbia, the land now composing the county was retroceded to Virginia on July 9, 1846, in an act of Congress that took effect in 1847. It was. The station covers the Washington metro area with the highest effective radiated power of any FM station in the area at 75,000 watts. It has an HD Radio HD Radio is the trademark for iBiquity's in-band on-channel digital radio technology used by AM and FM radio stations to transmit audio and data via a digital signal in conjunction with their analog signals. It was selected by the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in 2002 as a digital audio broadcasting method for the United simulcast at 90.9 FM HD and operates simulcasting stations WGMS-FM 89.1 in Hagerstown, Maryland Hagerstown is a city in northwestern Maryland, United States. It is the county seat of Washington County, and, by many definitions, the largest city in a region known as Western Maryland. The population of Hagerstown city proper, according to estimates conducted by the United States Census Bureau for a 12-month period ending 1 July 2008, is 39,728, and at W205BL-FM 88.9 in Frederick, Maryland Frederick is a city in west-central Maryland, United States. It is the county seat of Frederick County, the largest county by area in the state of Maryland. Frederick is an outlying community of the Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV Metropolitan Statistical Area, which is part of a greater Washington-Baltimore-Northern Virginia, DC-MD-.
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Past formats and format changes
From 1970 Categories: 1979 | Years in radio | Radio stations established in 1979 | through early 2005, WETA featured a mixed format of classical music, folk music, jazz, and news. It switched to a predominantly news and talk format from February 28, 2005 until January 22, 2007, when it switched to its current all-classical format. The switch was part of an unusual deal between the public radio station and commercial station WGMS (FM) WETA is a noncommercial, public radio station in Washington, DC broadcasting a classical music format on 90.9 FM. Its studios are located in Arlington, Virginia. The station covers the Washington metro area with the highest effective radiated power of any FM station in the area at 75,000 watts. It has an HD Radio simulcast at 90.9 FM HD and, which abandoned the classical music format it had aired for decades after an attempt to sell WGMS to Washington Redskins The Washington Redskins are a professional American football team based in the Washington, D.C. area. The team plays at FedExField in Landover, Maryland, which is in Prince George's County, Maryland. The team's headquarters and training facility are at Redskin Park in Ashburn, Virginia, a community in Loudoun County, Virginia, near Dulles owner Dan Snyder failed. The FCC subsequently granted WETA permission to use the WGMS call letters for its Hagerstown, Maryland, repeater station, formerly known as WETH.
Current format
WETA changed to a classical music format on January 22, 2007, at 8 p.m. EST, with classical music now offered for more of the broadcast day than ever before in the station’s history. Its current classical format is primarily mainstream orchestral, with a smattering of early and baroque music and chamber music. Aside from Saturday afternoon opera, very few vocal performances are aired on WETA.
As of April 2007 WETA reduced the number of hourly NPR NPR, formerly National Public Radio, is a privately and publicly funded non-profit membership media organization that serves as a national syndicator to 797 public radio stations in the United States. NPR was created in 1970, following congressional passage of the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967. This act was signed into law by President Lyndon B newscasts, which had continued to be heard every hour since the change to the classical music format. Newscasts are now heard on the hour during drive time Drive time is the daypart analog to prime time for radio broadcasting. It consists of the morning hours when listeners wake up, get ready, and/or head to work or school, and the afternoon hours when they are heading home and before their evening meal. These are the periods where the number of listeners is highest and, thus, commercial radio can and at selected hours at other times. WETA also airs audio from the PBS The Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television service with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. PBS operations are partially funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Its headquarters are in Arlington, Virginia NewsHour with Jim Lehrer Monday through Friday evenings, for the benefit of area commuters unable to arrive home in time to view the program on television.
WETA airs opera programming on Saturday afternoons, including the Metropolitan Opera radio broadcasts during the Met's regular December–April broadcast season.
WETA's only competition in the market area is WBJC WBJC is a public, non-commercial, radio station owned by Baltimore City Community College, in Baltimore, Maryland (91.5 FM), also a non-commercial station, which broadcasts a classical music format from Baltimore, Maryland Baltimore , is an independent city and the largest city and cultural center of the U.S. state of Maryland. The city is located in central Maryland along the tidal portion of the Patapsco River, an arm of the Chesapeake Bay. Baltimore is sometimes referred to as Baltimore City in order to distinguish it from surrounding Baltimore County. Founded in.
Other services
For many years, WETA has provided a sub-carrier channel for The Metropolitan Washington Ear, Inc. The Metropolitan Washington Ear offers two main services. The first is a radio reading service where volunteers read newspapers and other publications over a sub-frequency broadcast that is picked up by a network of special, distributed radios. The Washington Ear also offers an innovative Dial-IN newspaper and magazine service where volunteers, which offers news for the blind Blindness is the condition of lacking visual perception due to physiological or neurological factors and visually impaired. Listeners tune in to the service using special receivers provided free to qualifying individuals and can receive audio from more than 200 current publications, including newspapers, magazines, and bestselling books.
Management
- Daniel C. DeVany, Vice President and General Manager, Radio
- Jim Allison, Program Director, Radio
- Michael Byrnes, Chief Engineer, Radio
