News Talk 1400 AM in Winchester, Virginia has reportedly suffered a great loss in revenue following the death of conservative talk icon Rush Limbaugh. The station began broadcasting in 1941 and was purchased by North Carolina-based Centennial Broadcasting II in 2007.
“AM radio isn’t thriving today,” said Centennial President and CEO Allen Shaw told The Winchester Star. “Most listening is on FM,” he said. FM stations have a higher frequency range and broader bandwidth, so music played over the airwaves sounds better on them than on AM stations.”
The Rush Limbaugh Show debuted in 1988 and became the nation’s highest-rated talk radio program. It aired daily on WINC-AM.
Shaw noted that AM radio is not thriving today except in larger cities where some stations have found success with unique formats such as all-news or all-sports.
WINC-AM operates with a 1,000-watt signal that may not be easily listenable beyond Strasburg or Inwood, West Virginia, according to a map on radio-locator.com, a website providing details of radio stations nationwide.
Five years after signing on, and shortly after World War II, the Lewis family launched WINC-FM 92.5. It was one of the nation’s first FM stations — AM was still the main broadcasting medium at the time.
