WBAI
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| City | New York, New York |
|---|---|
| Broadcast area | Metropolitan New York |
| Branding | WBAI |
| Slogan | Your Peace and Justice Community Radio Station |
| Frequency | 99.5 MHz |
| First air date | January 8, 1960 |
| Format | Community radio |
| ERP | 4,300 watts, Stereo |
| HAAT | 415 meters |
| Class | B |
| Facility ID | 51249 |
| Callsign meaning | the former owner, Broadcast Associates Incorporated |
| Owner |
Pacifica Radio (Pacifica Foundation, Inc.) |
| Webcast | Listen Live |
| Website | wbai.org |
WBAI, a part of the Pacifica Radio Network, is a non-commercial, listener-supported radio station, broadcasting at 99.5 FM in New York City. The station has their transmitter atop the Empire State Building, Its programming is leftist/progressive, and a mixture of political news and opinion from a leftist perspective, tinged with aspects of its complex and varied history, such as Freeform radio, which WBAI played a role in developing, as well as various music.
The station began as WABF, which first went on the air in 1941 as W75NY, of Metropolitan Television, Inc. (W75NY indicating an eastern station at 47.5 MHz in New York), and moved to the 99.5 frequency in 1948. In 1955, after two years off the air, it was reborn as WBAI (whose calls were named after then-owners Broadcast Associates, Inc.).
WBAI was purchased by eccentric philanthropist Louis Schweitzer, who donated it to the Pacifica Foundation in 1960. The station, which had been a commercial enterprise, became non-commercial and listener-supported under Pacifica ownership.
The history of WBAI is iconoclastic and contentious. Referred to in a New York Times Magazine piece as "an anarchist's circus," one station manager was jailed in protest, and the staff, in protest at sweeping proposed changes of another station manager, seized the studio facilities, then located in a deconsecrated church, as well as the transmitter, located atop the Empire State Building. During the 1960s the station hosted innumerable anti-establishment causes, including anti-war activists, feminists, kids lib, early Firesign Theater comedy, and complete-album music overnight. Notable were the continual direct daily coverage of the Vietnam war, including the daily body count, their refusal to stop playing Janis Ian's song about interracial relationships "Society's Child" and their live coverage of various bra-burning conventions.
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Wikipedia