WALE (defunct)
| City | Greenville, Rhode Island |
|---|---|
| Broadcast area | Providence, Rhode Island |
| Frequency | 990 kHz |
| First air date | April 12, 1961 |
| Last air date | August 18, 2010 |
| Format | Silent |
| Power | 50,000 watts (day) 5,000 watts (night) |
| Class | B |
| Facility ID | 49128 |
| Transmitter coordinates | 41°57′18″N 71°35′39″W / 41.95500°N 71.59417°W |
| Callsign meaning | Whaling City (calls began on 1400-Fall River, Mass.) |
| Former callsigns | WLKW, WEAN |
| Affiliations | ABC Radio News Now |
| Owner | Cumbre Communications Corp. |
WALE (990 AM) was a radio station licensed to the community of Greenville, Rhode Island, and serving the Providence, Rhode Island, area. The station was last owned by Cumbre Communications Corp. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced that the station's license was deleted on April 1, 2014.
WLKW began official broadcasting on April 12, 1961 as Rhode Island's only 50 kW radio station during daylight hours only. This fact was noted in the calls as "LKW" really reads as "50 (L in Roman Numerals) KiloWatts" (sic). For most of its life the station's format was easy listening (the calls had since been adopted by 1450-West Warwick).
The station was assigned the WALE call sign from the FCC on July 24, 1989. The original WALE callsign was held for some 25 or so years by a different company operating out of the basement of an abandoned theater in Fall River, Massachusetts. Colonel Milton Mittler (formerly of WADK) was the owner.
When Francis Battaglia's North American Broadcasting Company bought WEAN, they attempted to program a talk format. The top rated show at this time was hosted by Rhode Island talk show legend Steve White. In the summer of 1991, WALE host Bob Giammarco was recognized by Arbitron as having the top rated evening program (After Hours with Bob Giammarco) in the market. This was no small feat considering the evening signal was quite low and the listening area was limited.
As the 1990s wore on, the station added more and more brokered programming until the station aired nothing but brokered programming. WALE earned a reputation in the Providence area as having fringe programming, such as American Dissident Voices program of the neo-Nazi National Alliance, which aired from 4:00-4:30pm on Saturdays to nearly no listeners. WALE was also the home of Rick Adams, a follower of Willis Carto's Liberty Lobby, who aired discussions promoting Holocaust denial. The station attracted further notoriety when it was discovered that many of their brokered hosts (often recruited by station personnel) were never compensated for their financial investments (some of which invested as much as $5,000 per three-month contracts), as WALE has no sales staff whatsoever. WALE was further accused of fudging its coverage area in marketing materials to mention that its 50,000 watt transmitter also reaches Boston and Worcester, Massachusetts, when in fact the station broadcast to a very narrow zone toward the southeast with a directional antenna, covering portions of Providence and out into the Atlantic Ocean; this was to protect Canadian clear channel (class A) stations CBW in Winnipeg, Manitoba and CBY in Corner Brook, Newfoundland and Labrador at night, and other stations at all times broadcasting on or near 990 during the day, including WXLM 980 in Groton, Connecticut; WCAP 980 in Lowell, Massachusetts; and CKGM, at the time on 990, in Montreal, Quebec.
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