WWRL
| City | New York City |
|---|---|
| Broadcast area | New York metropolitan area |
| Branding | Radio Zindagi |
| Frequency | 1600 kHz |
| First air date | August 26, 1926 |
| Format | Indian talk/music |
| Power | 25,000 watts (daytime) 5,000 watts (nighttime) |
| Class | B |
| Facility ID | 68906 |
| Callsign meaning |
W Woodside Radio Laboratory |
| Owner | Nimisha Shukla and Jeetendra Shukla (NJ Broadcasting, LLC) |
| Webcast | Listen Live |
| Website | radiozindagi.com |
WWRL (1600 kHz) is a commercial AM radio station in New York City. WWRL airs an Indian/South Asian radio format in the Hindi language from a transmitter site in Secaucus, NJ, and owned by Nimisha and Jeetendra Shukla, through licensee NJ Broadcasting, LLC.
For many years, WWRL catered to New York's African American community first as an R&B station, then later a Gospel music station and even later a Talk radio format. In 2006, WWRL replaced WLIB as the flagship station for the Air America Radio network and retained a Progressive talk radio format for the next eight years.
Founded by radio enthusiast William Reuman, WWRL began broadcasting at 12:00 a.m., Thursday, August 26, 1926 from a studio and transmitter in his home at 41-30 58th Street in Woodside, Queens, New York on a frequency of 1120 kHz. (WWRL stood for Woodside Radio Laboratory.) In 1927 the nascent Federal Radio Commission ordered the station to move to 1500 kHz. In its early days, the station served many ethnic communities, broadcasting programs in Italian, German, French, Polish, Hungarian, Slovak, and Czech, as well as English. Following implementation of the 1941 North American Regional Broadcasting Agreement the station again changed its frequency, this time to 1490 kHz, followed shortly thereafter by a move to the current 1600 kHz. In 1951 the station's official licensed location was changed from Woodside, NY to New York, NY. In 1964 Reuman retired and sold the station to a group headed by Egmont Sonderling.
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