WHYY-FM


WHYY-FM is a public FM radio station licensed to serve Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Its broadcast tower is located in the city's Roxborough neighborhood at while its studios and offices are located on Independence Mall in Center City, Philadelphia. The station, owned by WHYY, Inc., is a charter member of National Public Radio and contributes several programs to the national network.

History

WHYY signed on the air on December 14, 1954, owned by the Metropolitan Philadelphia Educational Radio and Television Corporation. It was the first educational station in Philadelphia. Their FM broadcast station, located at 17th Street and Sansom in Philadelphia, was donated by Westinghouse Broadcasting. In 1957, it added a sister television station, WHYY-TV on channel 35. In 1963, when WHYY-TV moved from channel 35 in Philadelphia to the stronger channel 12 in Wilmington, Delaware, Federal Communications Commission regulations in effect at the time forced the radio station to change its call sign to WUHY. Then as now, Philadelphia and Wilmington are separate radio markets, though they have long been a single television market. At the time, the FCC did not allow sister radio and television stations to share the same base call sign if they were located in different cities. 90.9 FM regained its original call sign in 1983 after the FCC eased this restriction.
When NPR was formed in 1970, the station became a charter member and was one of the 90 stations that carried the initial broadcast of All Things Considered.

Programs produced

Until 1990, WHYY served the region as a non-commercial station with a format that featured mostly classical music with some jazz and folk music. The management decision to establish a news/talk radio format was a departure from the classical music that most public radio stations were programming. The format switch resulted in protests from many of the station's listening audience who were among WHYY's major contributors. Temple University's WRTI began programming classical music during the day to serve the displaced listeners.

CEO controversy

Controversy erupted in the summer of 2007 when station Chief Executive Officer Bill Marrazzo was cited by the watchdog group Charity Navigator as the highest paid CEO in all of public broadcasting.
In an August 2007 article, popular Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Karen Heller called for a boycott of WHYY. And in September 2007 an anonymous group of WHYY employees sent an open letter to Marrazzo, the Inquirer, the Philadelphia Daily News and Philadelphia magazine, accusing him of "a serious lack of understanding when it comes to creating... a healthy workplace" and assailing his salary as "excessive and inappropriate." The five-page letter concluded with a call for Marrazzo to resign.

New Jersey expansion and controversy

On June 6, 2011, the New Jersey Public Broadcasting Authority agreed to sell five FM stations in Southern New Jersey to WHYY. The purchase was made through an anonymous one-million dollar grant and a non-cash agreement that included scholarships for students and teachers. The five stations were previously the southern portion of the New Jersey Network's statewide radio service.
The transaction was announced by Governor Chris Christie, as part of his long-term goal to end state-subsidized public broadcasting. The governor's critics maintained that scrapping New Jersey Network effectively ended all non-commercial statewide news coverage. It was also noted that the sale eliminated a source of legislative oversight frequently critical of the Christie administration.
WHYY assumed control of the stations through a management agreement on July 1, 2011, pending FCC approval for the acquisition. At that point, the stations began to simulcast WHYY-FM programming. The five stations are:
Call signFrequencyCity of licenseFacility IDERP
W		Height
m 		ClassTransmitter coordinates
WNJB-FM89.3 FMBridgeton, New Jersey489342,500 vert, 1 horizA
WNJM89.9 FMManahawkin, New Jersey48460250 vert, 1 horizA
WNJN-FM89.7 FMAtlantic City, New Jersey484836,000 vert, 25 horizA
WNJS-FM88.1 FMBerlin, New Jersey4848680 vert, 1 horizA
WNJZ90.3 FMCape May Court House, New Jersey484646,000A

The stations all operate at relatively low power due to the crowded state of the noncommercial end of the FM dial in the northeastern United States. They primarily served areas of southern New Jersey not covered by the main WHYY-FM signal, which itself operates at a relatively modest 13,500 watts. However, their combined footprint extends WHYY-FM's coverage from Berks County to the Jersey Shore.

Other station data