WFLA (AM)
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| City | Tampa, Florida |
|---|---|
| Broadcast area | Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, Florida and Sarasota-Bradenton, Florida as a secondary market |
| Branding | Newsradio 970 WFLA |
| Slogan | Tampa Bay's News, Traffic and Weather |
| Frequency | 970 kHz (also on HD Radio) |
| Translator(s) | KPM360 25.870 MHz |
| First air date | 1925 |
| Format | News/Talk |
| Language(s) | English |
| Power | 25,000 watts (day) 11,000 watts (night) 100 watts (KPM360) |
| Class | B |
| Facility ID | 29729 |
| Transmitter coordinates | 28°01′14″N 82°36′34″W / 28.02056°N 82.60944°W |
| Callsign meaning | W, pre-ZIP code era abbreviation for FLoridA |
| Affiliations |
WFLA-TV Fox News Radio NBC News Radio Tampa Bay Lightning |
| Owner |
iHeartMedia, Inc. (Citicasters Licenses, LLC) |
| Sister stations | WBTP, WDAE, WFLZ-FM, WFUS, WHNZ, WMTX, WXTB |
| Webcast | Listen Live |
| Website | 970wfla.com |
WFLA 970 AM ("Newsradio 970 WFLA") is talk-formatted AM radio station in Tampa, Florida, serving the Tampa Bay media market. The station is owned and operated by iHeartMedia, Inc. Inc., the largest U.S. radio station owner. The station's studios are located in South Tampa and the transmitter site is in Town 'n' Country.
WFLA began in 1925 as Clearwater radio station WGHB (1130 AM). By 1927, its call letters changed to WFLA and it moved to 590 AM. It shared the frequency with WSUN before they both moved together to 620 AM in 1929. In January 1941, WFLA moved to 940 AM, then to its present 970 AM that March.
WFLA carried most of the popular network shows during the golden days of radio. From 1945–1949, the station carried a gospel show, which featured legendary bass singer J. D. Sumner and The Sunny South Quartet. It had various music formats over the subsequent years (top 40, middle-of-the-road, adult contemporary) before switching to news/talk in 1986. It has been the market leader in this format ever since, and usually is among the top five stations in the market, according to Arbitron ratings.
At one time, WFLA and its FM radio sister (93.3 FM, now WFLZ-FM) were owned by Media General, the parent company of The Tampa Tribune and WFLA-TV. In the 1980s, federal regulations forced Media General to divest the radio stations because of its other local media holdings. The radio stations were sold to Blair Broadcasting in late 1982. Sconnix Communications of Charleston, South Carolina, bought WFLA and what was then WPDS from Blair Broadcasting (which was divesting all of its English-language broadcasting properties to concentrate on what became today's Telemundo) in 1987, and Jacor Communications purchased WFLA from Sconnix in 1988. (Clear Channel Communications purchased Jacor in 1999 and thus acquired WFLA and WFLZ.)
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