WPLJ

WPLJ (95.5 FM) is a non-commercial, listener-supported radio station, licensed to New York, New York. Owned by the Educational Media Foundation (EMF), based in Franklin, Tennessee, it broadcasts EMF's Christian adult contemporary formatted programming service, "K-Love".

WPLJ is a Class B FM station, with an effective radiated power (ERP) of 6,700 watts, transmitting from atop the Empire State Building in Midtown Manhattan. WPLJ broadcasts on several HD Radio digital subchannels in addition to its analog transmission. It is also heard on three FM translators around the New York metropolitan area: 94.3 MHz in Pomona, 94.9 in Hauppauge and 104.5 in Selden.

The station went on the air on May 4, 1948, under the call sign WJZ-FM. In March 1953, the station's call letters were changed to WABC-FM following the merger of the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) with United Paramount Theatres. As most FM stations did during the medium's formative years, 95.5 FM simulcast the programming of its AM sister station, WJZ/WABC (770 AM).

In the early 1960s, however, WABC-FM began to program itself separately from WABC (AM). During the 1962–63 New York City newspaper strike, the station programmed news for 17 hours daily. Two-and-a-half years before WINS launched its own around-the-clock, all-news format in April 1965, it was the first such attempt in the New York market. This was followed by stints with Broadway show tunes and general freeform programming, including broadcasts of New York Mets baseball games. WABC's AM personalities, such as Dan Ingram, Chuck Leonard, and Bob Lewis, hosted programs on the FM side which were the total opposites of the contemporary hit radio–powered sound for which they were better known on AM. WABC-FM continued to simulcast its AM sister station during Herb Oscar Anderson's morning drive program.

At the start of 1968, ABC split its radio network into four distinct components, one of which was dedicated to FM radio. The following year, WABC-FM and its sister stations—KABC-FM in Los Angeles; WLS-FM in Chicago; KGO-FM in San Francisco; WXYZ-FM in Detroit; KQV-FM in Pittsburgh; and newly acquired KXYZ-FM in Houston—began carrying an automated, youth-oriented, progressive rock format known as Love.

In late 1970, Allen Shaw, the then-president of ABC's FM station group, announced two big changes to take place in early 1971: ABC dropped Love and installed completely live-and-local, freeform rock formats. The network also applied for call letter changes for the seven stations. The New York outlet was slated to be renamed WRIF, but a clerical error on the part of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) resulted in those calls being awarded to the former WXYZ-FM in Detroit—whose own request for WDAI ("Detroit Auto Industry") was itself given mistakenly to WLS-FM in Chicago—leaving WABC-FM to start from scratch for its own rebranding. On February 13, at midnight, 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. The song, "W-P-L-J", was originally performed by the Four Deuces in 1955, and stood for "White Port and Lemon Juice". On the air, the station hired John Zacherle, Alex Bennett, Vin Scelsa, Jimmy Fink, and Michael Cuscuna (from WMMR and WXPN in Philadelphia) as personalities. All seven ABC-owned FM stations also adopted a shared logo styling with the callsign and frequency within a multi-colored oval; WRIF and KLOS (the former KABC-FM) continue to use a form of this logo to the present day.

In September 1971, Allen Shaw and ABC programming executive Bob Henaberry designed and pioneered the very first album-oriented rock (AOR) format on WPLJ, playing only the best cuts from the best-selling rock albums with a minimum of disc jockey talk. Using the slogan "Rock 'N Stereo", the station played artists such as Led Zeppelin, The Beatles, Aerosmith, Jimi Hendrix, Cream, The Doobie Brothers, Steely Dan, Elton John, Deep Purple, Billy Joel, Rod Stewart, David Bowie, and The Allman Brothers. The station also played pop songs from artists such as James Taylor, Stevie Wonder, and Carly Simon, distinguishing itself from top 40 stations (such as co-owned WABC) by playing more tracks from their albums. 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.^{[citation needed]}

In 1973, ABC transferred Willard Lochridge, the general manager of WRIF in Detroit, to New York to manage WPLJ. The following year, Lochridge brought his Detroit program director, Larry Berger to WPLJ, and adopted a new slogan: "New York's Best Rock". Some of the personalities on the station during this period included Jim Kerr, Pat St. John, Jimmy Fink, Carol Miller, Tony Pigg, John Zacherle, Alex Bennett, Bob Marrone, and Dave Charity. Berger himself hosted a Sunday night call-in show, in which he discussed seemingly any topic with listeners—except the specifics of the playlist. During these call-in segments, some callers suggested that the station sped up (or "pitched up") the music so that they could fit in more commercials while still being able to claim that they played a large number of songs per hour. Berger repeatedly denied that this practice was in use at WPLJ. In the September 20, 1999, episode of Crap from the Past, host Ron "Boogiemonster" Gerber suggested that music was sped up on WPLJ to make the same music sound less dynamic on other stations.