WASH is a Clear Channel Communications

Clear Channel Communications

Clear Channel Communications, Inc. is an American media conglomerate company headquartered in San Antonio, Texas. It was founded in 1972 by Lowry Mays and Red McCombs, and was taken private by Bain Capital LLC and Thomas H. Lee Partners LP in a leveraged buyout in 2008...

 radio station

Radio station

Radio broadcasting is a one-way wireless transmission over radio waves intended to reach a wide audience. Stations can be linked in radio networks to broadcast a common radio format, either in broadcast syndication or simulcast or both...

 located in Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C.

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. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....

. Known on-air as "Wash-FM", the station has an adult contemporary format. The station also streams its broadcast on the Internet

Internet

The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...

.

WASH has been a soft adult contemporary station in one form or another since the 70s. For a few years in the early 80s, the station attempted to do a Top 40 / CHR

Contemporary hit radio

Contemporary hit radio is a radio format that is common in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and Australia that focuses on playing current and recurrent popular music as determined by the Top 40 music charts...

 format (publicized by the station's "WASH with the Stars" TV ad campaign) which had no success and the station later returned to their original Soft AC

Soft rock

Soft rock is a style of music which uses the techniques of rock music to compose a softer, more toned-down sound. Soft rock songs generally tend to focus on themes like love, everyday life and relationships. The genre tends to make heavy use of acoustic guitars, pianos, synthesizers and sometimes...

 format. On Saturday nights from 7 pm - midnight (Eastern time), the station plays disco music and related songs (mostly 70s Top 40) in a program known as "Jammin' Saturday Night". The station recently began broadcasting two hours of 80s music (from midnight - 2:00 am Eastern time) immediately following "Jammin' Saturday Night".

The station plays exclusively Christmas

Christmas

Christmas or Christmas Day is an annual holiday generally celebrated on December 25 by billions of people around the world. It is a Christian feast that commemorates the birth of Jesus Christ, liturgically closing the Advent season and initiating the season of Christmastide, which lasts twelve days...

music from mid-November through Christmas Day (plus on July 25th for "Christmas in July") and calls itself "Washington's Home for the Holidays" during the season. In 2011, the station started playing exclusively Christmas music on Friday, November 18.

WASH-FM Early History

WASH-FM was an early FM station licensed to Washington, DC in 1944. Original owner, Everett L Dillard. WASH-FM and its owner, Dillard were early pioneers in FM “networking” and Stereo broadcasting.

Networking

During the 1940s Dillard also headed the Washington-based Continental FM Network, a 52-station network. The Continental Network was Dillard’s & Edwin Howard Armstrong's creation to get some content for Armstrong’s Alpine, NJ, station. Dillard's WASH fed a 15 kHz phone line to Alpine. Some of the content was WASH's evening classical record program. The network “connected” Dillard’s WASH-FM to stations in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York (as far west as Buffalo), Connecticut, Massachusetts and ending at Mount Washington, in New Hampshire. Many of the stations picked up the broadcast from the station "down the line" and rebroadcast it, thus allowing the next station "up the line" to pick-up the broadcast and forward it along.

Early Stereo

WASH-FM also conducted early experiments with stereo broadcasts. One system was to broadcast one channel over WASH-FM, and the other channel on another of Dillard’s stations, WDON-AM. (1540 Kc Wheaton, MD)

Dillard Sells WASH-FM

Dillard sold WASH-FM in 1968 to Metromedia, who moved the studios and transmitter from Wheaton, MD to Metromedia’s Wisconsin Ave. headquarters. The transmitter was moved to Metromedia’s WTTG-TV’s transmitter facility and broadcast from the WTTG-TV tower.

$1,000,000 Giveaway

In the 1970s, the station gained notoriety for its million dollar give-away contest, both because of the amount of money involved and because of the difficulty the station encountered in finding a winner who met all of the contest's requirements.

External links

• Official site
• WASH-HD2