WAMC-FM
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| City | Albany, New York |
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| Broadcast area |
Primary: Albany Capital District of New York; parts of Eastern New York; Southern Vermont, Western Massachusetts, Upper Northwest Connecticut Secondary: West-Central Connecticut, southwestern New Hampshire, northwestern New Jersey, northeast Pennsylvania, a small portion of Quebec. |
| Branding | WAMC, Northeast Public Radio |
| Frequency | See § Stations |
| Translator(s) | See § Translators |
| First air date | 1958 |
| Format | Public Radio |
| Callsign meaning | Albany Medical College/Center |
| Owner | WAMC |
| Webcast | Listen Live |
| Website | www |
WAMC is a public radio network headquartered in Albany, New York. The network has 12 broadcast radio stations (transmitters) and 16 broadcast relay stations (translators,repeaters). One of the stations is an AM station: WAMC (AM) 1400 in Albany. The organization's legal name is "WAMC" and it is also known as "WAMC Public Radio" or "WAMC Northeast Public Radio."
In addition, the station operates The Linda/WAMC Performing Arts Studio, a performance venue in Albany located near its Central Avenue studios.
A member of NPR and affiliate of Public Radio International and American Public Media, WAMC is a charitable, educational, non-commercial broadcaster meeting the requirements of Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code (26 U.S.C. §501(c)(3)) It had total annual revenues for the fiscal year 2010 of $6.36 million.
Its corporate officers include Anne Erickson, chair of the board of trustees, and , president and chief executive officer (since 1981).
WAMC started in 1958 as a radio station for the local hospital and medical school, Albany Medical Center and Albany Medical College. Albany Medical Center is a large tertiary-care hospital serving the upper Hudson Valley, and the medical school (with which it is affiliated) is one of the country's ACGME-accredited medical schools. The affiliation with Albany Medical Center was the source of the call letters "WAMC".
The station's 24/7 non-commercial classical music format served a large listener base and was popular among music aficionados. The earliest years also included broadcasts of health information and lectures from visiting professors. Early on, part of WAMC's regular programming was the broadcast of live concerts by the Boston Symphony Orchestra from Tanglewood and Boston. When the NPR network was founded in 1970, WAMC signed-on as one of NPR's original 90 "charter" members. Around 1980, financial pressures caused the hospital and medical school to divest the station. In 1981, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) license on 90.3 FM was transferred to a 501c3 tax-exempt entity, WAMC, Inc., which had been set up by a group of five corporators (amongst them the current CEO and president, Alan S. Chartock) affiliated with the State University of New York and New York State government. In the years since the transfer, the station has cut back on most classical music programming (live BSO concerts are still broadcast) while becoming a producer of information-based, non-music programming, providing a variety of interview-format programs to radio stations across the country via the station's in-house subsidiary, National Productions. (WMHT-FM in nearby Schenectady, New York and its network of repeater stations continues to program classical music in the region.)
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