WASH (FM)
 |
|
| City | Washington, D.C. |
|---|---|
| Broadcast area | Washington, D.C. |
| Branding | 97.1 WASH-FM |
| Slogan | Washington's Variety of the 80s, 90s, & Today (Year round)/ Washington, D.C.'s Christmas Station (Mid-November–Christmas) |
| Frequency | 97.1 MHz (also on HD Radio) 97.1-HD2 for Oldies |
| First air date | 1948 |
| Format |
Mainstream AC Christmas music (Nov.-Dec.) |
| ERP | 17,500 watts |
| HAAT | 242 meters |
| Class | B |
| Facility ID | 70933 |
| Callsign meaning | WASHington, D.C. or George WASHington |
| Owner |
iHeartMedia, Inc. (AMFM Radio Licenses, L.L.C.) |
| Sister stations | WBIG, WIHT, WMZQ, WWDC |
| Webcast |
Listen Live HD2: Listen Live |
| Website | washfm.iheart.com |
WASH (97.1 FM) is an iHeartMedia, Inc. radio station located in Washington, D.C.. Known on-air as "Wash-FM", the station has an Mainstream AC format. The station also streams its broadcast on iHeartRadio. The station's studios are located in Rockville, Maryland and the transmitter site is in DC's Tenleytown district.
WASH has been a soft adult contemporary station in one form or another since the 1970s. For a few years in the early 1980s, the station attempted to do a Top 40 / CHR 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 format. Until late 2013, the station played disco music and related songs (mostly 1970s Top 40) in a program known as "Jammin' Saturday Night" from 7 pm to midnight. After the 2013 holiday season, the program was revamped to play songs from the 1980s under the name "All 80's Saturday Night".
The station plays exclusively Christmas music from mid-November through Christmas Day (plus on July 25 for "Christmas in July") and calls itself "Washington's Official Christmas Station" during the season.
WASH-FM broadcasts in the HD digital hybrid format.
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.
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.
...
Wikipedia