WAMB
Encyclopedia
WAMB is a radio station
Radio station
Radio broadcasting is a one-way wireless transmission over radio waves intended to reach a wide audience. Stations can be linked in radio networks to broadcast a common radio format, either in broadcast syndication or simulcast or both...

 broadcasting a Adult Standards
Adult standards
Adult standards is a North American radio format heard primarily on AM or class A FM stations.Adult standards is aimed at "mature" adults, meaning mainly those persons over 50 years of age, but it is mostly targeted for senior citizens...

 format to the Nashville, Tennessee
Nashville, Tennessee
Nashville is the capital of the U.S. state of Tennessee and the county seat of Davidson County. It is located on the Cumberland River in Davidson County, in the north-central part of the state. The city is a center for the health care, publishing, banking and transportation industries, and is home...

, USA area. The station is currently owned by Great Southern Broadcasting Company and features programing from CNN Radio. In previous years, the station has also broadcast on the frequencies of 1190 and 1160 kHz.

History

WAMB was the brainchild of longtime Nashville broadcaster Bill Barry. Barry realized in the late 1960s that the switch of most popular radio stations to the rock music
Rock and roll
Rock and roll is a genre of popular music that originated and evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s, primarily from a combination of African American blues, country, jazz, and gospel music...

 format was alienating many older listeners, a large segment of whom were nostalgic
Nostalgia
The term nostalgia describes a yearning for the past, often in idealized form.The word is a learned formation of a Greek compound, consisting of , meaning "returning home", a Homeric word, and , meaning "pain, ache"...

 for the big band
Big band
A big band is a type of musical ensemble associated with jazz and the Swing Era typically consisting of rhythm, brass, and woodwind instruments totaling approximately twelve to twenty-five musicians...

 sound of 1930s and 1940s popular music
Popular music
Popular music belongs to any of a number of musical genres "having wide appeal" and is typically distributed to large audiences through the music industry. It stands in contrast to both art music and traditional music, which are typically disseminated academically or orally to smaller, local...

 and a station which would play it. In December 1968, Barry started such a station, licensed to the Nashville suburb
Suburb
The word suburb mostly refers to a residential area, either existing as part of a city or as a separate residential community within commuting distance of a city . Some suburbs have a degree of administrative autonomy, and most have lower population density than inner city neighborhoods...

 of Donelson
Donelson, Tennessee
Donelson is a neighborhood of Nashville, Tennessee located east of downtown Nashville along U.S. Highway 70. It is named in honor of John Donelson, co-founder of Nashville and father-in-law of Andrew Jackson, Nashvillian and seventh President of the United States...

. Calling the format "The Music of Your Life
Music of Your Life
Music of Your Life is a satellite-delivered radio network featuring the Adult Standards music format. Created by record executive and jingle writer Al Ham, and now under the direction of Marc Angell, Music of Your Life has more than 50 AM, FM and HD-2 radio station affiliates, and has been in...

", it was a pioneer of this format, which was eventually franchised
Franchising
Franchising is the practice of using another firm's successful business model. The word 'franchise' is of anglo-French derivation - from franc- meaning free, and is used both as a noun and as a verb....

 and which at one point numbered hundreds of such stations throughout North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...

. Today, the format is heard on approximately 175 stations.

From a small start, Barry began to attract advertisers
Advertising
Advertising is a form of communication used to persuade an audience to take some action with respect to products, ideas, or services. Most commonly, the desired result is to drive consumer behavior with respect to a commercial offering, although political and ideological advertising is also common...

 whose products appealed largely to older listeners – Cadillac
Cadillac
Cadillac is an American luxury vehicle marque owned by General Motors . Cadillac vehicles are sold in over 50 countries and territories, but mostly in North America. Cadillac is currently the second oldest American automobile manufacturer behind fellow GM marque Buick and is among the oldest...

 automobiles, retirement
Retirement
Retirement is the point where a person stops employment completely. A person may also semi-retire by reducing work hours.Many people choose to retire when they are eligible for private or public pension benefits, although some are forced to retire when physical conditions don't allow the person to...

 homes, prepaid funeral
Funeral
A funeral is a ceremony for celebrating, sanctifying, or remembering the life of a person who has died. Funerary customs comprise the complex of beliefs and practices used by a culture to remember the dead, from interment itself, to various monuments, prayers, and rituals undertaken in their honor...

 plans, and medical services (once the FCC
Federal Communications Commission
The Federal Communications Commission is an independent agency of the United States government, created, Congressional statute , and with the majority of its commissioners appointed by the current President. The FCC works towards six goals in the areas of broadband, competition, the spectrum, the...

 started allowing those providers to advertise). Barry eventually was able to raise the station's daytime power to the maximum 50,000 watts allowed by law; nighttime power was severely limited by the fact that WAMB was not a Class A clear channel station. A low-powered (100 watt) FM station simulcasting the AM broadcast was added later as well.

Barry's station and its programming attracted a small (by mass-market radio standards) but exceptionally loyal listening audience, with many, perhaps most, listeners seldom if ever touching the dial to move to other stations. Barry served his listeners with hourly news, which began disappearing from many music-format stations once the FCC stopped requiring radio broadcasters to deliver at least five minutes of it each broadcast hour. Barry nonetheless knew that news was very important to much of his mature audience, as well as investment news (market research
Market research
Market research is any organized effort to gather information about markets or customers. It is a very important component of business strategy...

 revealing that his audience had a far larger-than-average net worth).

The primary threat to Barry and WAMB remained the passage of time – each year a certain percentage of his targeted audience died and for the most part was not replaced by younger listeners. In recognition of this fact, some newer music from the "easy-listening" category of artists such as the Ames Brothers
Ames Brothers
The Ames Brothers were a singing quartet from Malden, Massachusetts, who were particularly famous in the 1950s for their traditional pop music hits.-Biography:The Ames Brothers got their beginning in Malden, where all four were born...

, Roger Whittaker
Roger Whittaker
Roger Whittaker is an Anglo-Kenyan singer-songwriter and musician with worldwide record sales of over 55 million. His music can be described as easy listening. He is best known for his baritone singing voice and trademark whistling ability...

, and, eventually, even Harry Connick, Jr.
Harry Connick, Jr.
Joseph Harry Fowler Connick, Jr. is an American singer, big-band leader/conductor, pianist, actor, and composer. He has sold over 25 million albums worldwide. Connick is ranked among the top 60 best-selling male artists in the United States by the Recording Industry Association of America, with...

 was admitted to the playlist, but the station's audience continued to skew far older than any other major Nashville station. In recognition of this fact, and the fact that fewer AM stations anywhere were programming music of any sort than previously, Barry sold the 1160 kHz frequency in late 2005 to religious radio broadcaster
Christian radio
Christian radio is a category of radio formats that focus on transmitting programming with a Christian message. In the United States, where it is more established, many such broadcasters play popular music of Christian influence, though many programs have talk or news programming covering...

 Bott Communications. Bott took over the frequency in early 2006 and changed the format to a Christian one, with a standard emphasis on evangelical/fundamentalist preaching and conservative
Conservatism
Conservatism is a political and social philosophy that promotes the maintenance of traditional institutions and supports, at the most, minimal and gradual change in society. Some conservatives seek to preserve things as they are, emphasizing stability and continuity, while others oppose modernism...

 talk show
Talk show
A talk show or chat show is a television program or radio program where one person discuss various topics put forth by a talk show host....

s. To reflect the new identity, Bott had the callsign of 1160 kHz changed to WCRT. Barry decided to move the big band format and the WAMB callsign to a new frequency (with power greatly reduced), 1200 kHz. More recently, though, Barry acquired another FM frequency, 99.3, for simulcasting purposes, especially at night.

Roundtable

WAMB was the last Nashville radio station to carry Teddy Bart's Roundtable morning discussion program. Bart and co-host Karlen Evins interviewed newsmakers involved in Tennessee politics on the two-hour show, which began originally on WLAC
WLAC
WLAC is a clear channel radio station based in Nashville, Tennessee, operating at 1510 kHz on the AM dial.-Early history:Its first broadcast took place on November 24, 1926. The call letters were chosen to contain an acronym for the first owner of the station, the Life and Casualty Insurance...

 in 1985 and had been heard on several other stations in the 1990s. The non-profit organization founded by Bart and Evins to produce the program discontinued production in the summer of 2005, due to increasing debts and declining listenership. Elsewhere in the state, cable television systems and Martin's
Martin, Tennessee
Martin is a city in Weakley County, Tennessee, United States. Martin is the home of the University of Tennessee at Martin. The population was 10,515 at the 2000 census.-Geography:Martin is located at ....

 (west Tennessee) WLJT
WLJT
WLJT-DT is the Public Broadcasting Service member station serving western and northwestern Tennessee on digital channel 47...

, a PBS
Public Broadcasting Service
The Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television network with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. Its headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia....

 affiliate, carried a video version of "Roundtable," with a camera positioned inside the radio control room.

Recently, though, Bart and Evins have been offering a regular podcast
Podcast
A podcast is a series of digital media files that are released episodically and often downloaded through web syndication...

titled "Beyond Reason," an exploration of religious and metaphysical interpretation of current events; both hosts have long maintained interests in the paranormal.
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