WINS (AM)

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WINS

Broadcast area	New York, New York
Branding	1010 WINS
Slogan	All News. All The Time. You Give Us 22 minutes, we'll give you the world.
First air date	1924 (as WGBS)
Frequency	1010 kHz (analog) 102.7 mHz HD2 (digital)
Format	News
ERP	50,000 watts
Class	A
Callsign meaning	W International News Service
Owner	CBS Radio
Website	1010wins.com

WINS (AM), known on-air as "Ten-Ten WINS", is an all-news radio station in New York City at 1010 kHz, owned by CBS Radio (formerly Infinity Broadcasting). Its transmitters are located in Lyndhurst, New Jersey.

The station first went on the air in 1924 on 950 kHz as WGBS, named after and broadcasting from its owner, Gimbel's department store. It moved to 860 kHz sometime around 1927, and to 600 around 1930, settling on 1180 around 1931. It was bought by William Randolph Hearst in 1932, and by 1934 had adopted its present callsign (named after Hearst's International News Service). It changed its frequency from 1180 to 1010 on March 29, 1941 as part of NARBA. Crosley Broadcasting purchased the station from Hearst in 1946.

Crosley sold the station in 1953 to the Gotham Broadcasting Corp. In 1954 under owner new ownership WINS became one of the first stations to play rock and roll, and featured famous and influential disk jockeys such as Alan Freed and Murray (the K) Kaufman. Sports broadcaster Les Keiter, a latter-day member of the first generation of legends in that field, served as sports director for a period in the '50s. In 1958, New York's first season without the baseball Giants, who had moved west to San Francisco, Keiter kept disconnected fans in distant touch with their team via another passé art form, baseball-game re-creations, on WINS.

In the late-1950s early-1960s WINS-AM, WMGM and WABC (AM) were the big Top 40 stations in the New York City area. But by 1963, WMCA, for a period of more than three years, upstaged the 50,000-watt giants, and became the top-rated top 40 station in the Big Apple. WINS consequently saw a decline of ratings between 1963 and 1965, normally trailing WMCA and WABC by some distance. Note: WMGM had already defected to a beautiful music format under the calls WHN in November, 1962.

In 1965 under owner Westinghouse WINS changed format, becoming one of the first all-news stations in the United States-which was appropriate considering what the call letters (see above) stand for. As with other Westinghouse-owned news stations, WINS usually can be easily identified by a distinctive teletype sound effect playing in the background (some other stations later dropped this, but WINS has kept it) and the slogan, "WINS-Ten Ten New York, Group W Westinghouse Broadcasting Company, Serving New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut with All News All The Time." They later introduced the slogan, "You give us 22 minutes, we'll give you the world." Other features of the news radio station include "Traffic and Transit on the 1's", and a time tone at the start of every half hour.

Traffic and weather have been important element of the station for decades. Weather is provided by AccuWeather and traffic by Shadow Traffic. Live weather and traffic reports are delivered throughout the day. The station first aired Shadow Traffic reports on December 3, 1979 with long-time New York City traffic reporter Fred Feldman during morning rush hours and Bernie Wagenblast during afternoon rush hours. Pete Tauriello has been a traffic reporter on the station continuously since the mid 1980s.

WINS has consistently ranked as one of the highest-rated stations in New York metro, usually beating its all-news competitor WCBS-AM in the immediate New York City area (although both are now owned by CBS). This is helped with the teaming up with WNBC TV to provide additional traffic coverage for the New York City area.

[edit] External links

• Official website of 1010 WINS
• History of the station
• WINS Historical Profile & Interviews - 1978
• Query the FCC's AM station database for WINS