*** Welcome to piglix ***

WBSS (AM)

WBSS
KOOL 98.3.jpg
City Pleasantville, New Jersey
Broadcast area Atlantic City, New Jersey
Branding Kool 98.3
Slogan South Jersey's Greatest Hits
Frequency 1490 kHz
First air date 1955 (as WLDB)
Format Classic Hits (WTKU-FM simulcast)
Power 400 watts
Class C
Facility ID 30040
Transmitter coordinates 39°23′24″N 74°30′45″W / 39.39000°N 74.51250°W / 39.39000; -74.51250
Former callsigns WLDB (1955-1974)
WUSS (1974-1997)
WGYM (1997-2001)
WUSS (2001-2006)
WTKU (2006-2007)
WTAA (2007-2010)
Owner Longport Media
Webcast Listen Live
Website kool983.com

WBSS (1490 AM), is a 400 watt radio station operating with a simulcast of WTKU-FM's classic hits format, licensed to Pleasantville, New Jersey. This station is under ownership of Longport Media and it serves three counties in New Jersey: Ocean, Atlantic and Cape May. Along the Garden State Parkway the station can be heard clearly from Exit 74 to Exit 10.

The first station to broadcast on the 1490 frequency at the South Jersey shore was WBAB in Atlantic City, which operated as a CBS affiliate in the 1940s. WBAB went off the air and by 1955 had been replaced by WLDB (named for its owners, Leroy and Dorothy Bremmer). By the early 1970s WLDB was an NBC affiliate playing mostly country music.

In late 1974 WLDB was sold to a group of local African-American businessmen. The call sign was changed to WUSS ("We're The United States of Soul!") and the station began to target the black community with its programming. During its 20-year run as an Urban station, some of the WUSS personalities included Larry Hicks, Larry Hayes, Lee "Brown Sugar" Sherman, Ron Allen, Eddie O'Jay, Stan Brooks, Cooks Books, Kingsley Smith, Ellis B. "Bruce Ellis" Feaster, Steve Ross, with The Dude & The Dudess, and Vernon Robbins. WUSS was successful for a number of years under the name "1490 jAMs", but eventually fell victim to the general trend away from music on AM. After a short period of running satellite-delivered talk and oldies/blues programming, it went silent in the mid-1990s, then was sold to the owners of WOND.

The new ownership changed the station's city of license to Pleasantville and relocated its transmitter to the WOND site in that city. The call letters were changed to WGYM and a sports talk format was instituted. In 2001 the WUSS call sign returned and the format was changed to gospel; in the next few years, the station tried playing R&B oldies, then pop oldies (simulcasting WTKU), went back to sports talk, then began simulcasting WTKU again (taking on the WTKU call letters in 2006). In the spring of 2007, the call sign was changed to WTAA and the station began to run a progressive talk radio format, mostly fed from the Air America Radio network. It also carried Imus In The Morning.


...
Wikipedia

...