18 Facts About WPLJ

WPLJ's transmitter is located at the Empire State Building and broadcasts four HD Radio digital subchannels in addition to its analog transmission.

On February 14,1971, the station's call letters changed to WPLJ, chosen after Allen Shaw noticed the letter combination as the name of a song on the 1970 Mothers of Invention record, Burnt Weeny Sandwich.

In September 1971, Allen Shaw and ABC programming executive Bob Henaberry designed and pioneered the very first album-oriented rock format on WPLJ, playing only the best cuts from the best-selling rock albums with a minimum of disc jockey talk.

The station's Arbitron ratings shot up dramatically, and WPLJ became New York's most listened-to FM rock station for most of the 1970s.

In 1982, WPLJ received a direct competitor in WAPP, which adopted a near-identical AOR format to WPLJ .

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WPLJ's ratings ended up besting those of WAPP after the latter started playing commercials in the fall of 1982.

In March 1983, WPLJ added Jackson's other hit "Beat It", which received very positive reaction.

The following spring, WPLJ identified itself very briefly as "The New Musicradio PLJ" before segueing to "Hitradio 95" just a short time later.

WPLJ continued to be successful until 1990, when ratings started to decline.

WPLJ began to regain some momentum; however, in early 1991, Cuddy and Dolan hired Scott Shannon, who had just left his rock hits project, KQLZ in Los Angeles.

Also, WPLJ began dayparting its programming by leaning towards adult top 40 with more gold and recurrents being played during the daytime hours, while still playing some rhythmic-leaning material during the evening hours.

On February 5,1999, WPLJ abruptly moved to a modern adult contemporary format, a variation of the hot AC format.

In 2005, with ratings in decline, WPLJ started to play more music from the 1970s and 1980s.

WPLJ returned to playing music of the late 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s.

WPLJ did extremely well with adult women in the lucrative nine northern New Jersey counties adjacent to New York City.

On February 16,2009, WPLJ started airing the syndicated program The Billy Bush Show in the evenings.

On July 4,2014, WPLJ-HD2 flipped to an adult contemporary format known as "FAS", due to the discontinuation of The True Oldies Channel's distribution.

Also in 2019, WPLJ-HD3 adopted a simulcast of the Christian-formatted "Air1".