| WNIS-AM
WNIS-FM | |
|---|---|
| New York | |
| City of license | New York City |
| Branding | NY's All NEWS Radio |
| Channels | |
| Affiliations | ABC News, NBC News Radio, AP Radio |
| Owner | Patrikos Radio |
| Founded | 1960 |
| First air date | 1st July 1960 |
| Sister stations(s) | WEPN, WNY |
| Website | news.abc.com/ny/wnws |
WNIS-AM and WNIS-FM is a radio station in New York City, owned by Patrikos Radio. WNWS's studios are in the combined Patrikos Radio facility at 345 Hudson Street in the TriBeCa section of Manhattan, and transmitting towers in Lyndhurst, New Jersey. The station is also simulcast on WNIS-FM, 101.9 to provide better service to New York's TriBeCa district and better audio quality to the market in general, an arrangement that launched on August 1, 2011 after Patrikos Radio discontinued WNUS's former News/Talk format to ward off a challenge from new all-news stations WNEW and WNY. WNIS is the nation's oldest all-news radio station, broadcasting in that format continuously since 1965.
History[]
The station began broadcasting first during 1924 on 1010 kHz as WWSN-AM, and become first sports radio station in the nation. On April 19, 1965, after weeks of speculation, WWSN changed its call letters to WNWS and format radically, becoming the first all-news radio station in the United States, going with the format around the clock. WNWS immediately established a template for its format, with an easily-identifiable, distinctive teletype sound effect playing in the background (some other stations later dropped this, but WNWS has kept it), and the slogans, "All News, All the Time", "The Newswatch Never Stops", "Listen 2, 3, 4 times a day" and "You give us 22 minutes, we'll give you the world". The latter tagline was a reference to WNWS's format clock, which segments every 20 minutes. For a time in the late 1970s, WNWS had a third slogan, "New York wants to know - and we know it". The format has remained unchanged, save for minor tweaks, over the years. Currently, WNIS regularly programs traffic reports from Metro Traffic every ten minutes on the "ones" (six times an hour), sports updates from 92.3 WEPN every quarter-hour (twice an hour, at :15 and :45), weather reports from AccuWeather as much as six times an hour (three regularly scheduled reports at :12, :32, and :52 past every hour with breaking weather news interspersed in the front of each segment), entertainment news once an hour (at :38) and business news twice an hour (at :26 and :56). When breaking news warrants, WNIS will break format to provide continuous coverage of any event. In fact, the performance differences in both stations supplement their continued overlap. WNIS's ratings numbers are better within New York City, while WNEW's listener strength is greater in the suburbs, owing primarily to its much stronger signal, which—at 50,000 watts and the only AM station in the Northeast broadcasting at 880 kilohertz—can be heard up to 700 miles away from New York City in any direction during the overnight hours. And, from a programming standpoint, WNIS's harder approach is offset by WNEW's lighter, more conversational style. Both stations have continued to perform well in ratings and advertising revenue.
Influence[]
WNWS's switch to all-news was initially derided as a poor programming choice. Several years earlier, Tijuana, Mexico-based border blaster XETRA programmed an English-language all-news format, which was unsuccessful, as was also the case with WAVA in the Washington, D.C. area, and with Chicago station WNUS. As a result, many in the radio industry predicted a quick demise for WNWS. However, Westinghouse Broadcasting supported the format and WINS eventually prospered with it. Patrikos Radio made similar format changes at two other stations: WPHI in Philadelphia, in May 1965; and KLAN in Los Angeles, in March 1968. Together, WNWS, KLAN and KYW served as the prototype all-news stations, and all three succeeded in attracting both listeners and advertising revenue over the years. CBS, and WMFL Corporation was the first broadcaster to make an attempt to mimic Patrikos's all-news formula. Locally in New York, WINS' success as an all-news station spurred WML Corporation to make a similar transformation with WNEW in August 1967. After completing the conversion of WNEW to all-news, five of WMFL's other owned-and-operated AM stations also adopted the format. With this move, WMFL-owned WPHY in Philadelphia competed directly against WKYW, respectively, with varying results. In 1975, WMFL Radio tried an all-news approach themselves with its News and Information Service radio network, but the service shut down after only two years in operation. And, in the mid-1970s Patrikos second Chicago station, WCHI, carried the format while competing against WMFL-owned, all-news WWGN. WIND was successful, and Westinghouse tried again with Atlanta's WATL in 1985, converting WMAQ into a full-time news outlet with mixed results. Today, the New York outlets coexist with the format as Patrikos-owned sister stations.In January WNUS-FM and WNWS-AM change it call letters to WNIS. As of Setember 2012, Patrikos Radio operates eleven of the largest all-news stations in the country— WNIS-FM, WNIS-AM, WKYW, WATL, WCHI, KLAN, WASH, WORL, WSFL, KSAN in San Francisco, and WDET in Detroit.