The Busiest FM Frequency in Philadelphia

For reasons forever lost to the ethereal vagaries of FCC licensing, the 92.9 FM channel is the busiest in the Philadelphia metropolitan area. If you were to drive a lap around the MSA, you might be able to tune in 12 different radio stations on that frequency. This is only hypothetically possible because 10 of those stations are low power (LP) stations operating at under 100 watts. However, it is literally impossible because unlike most major metros, Philadelphia has no perimeter highway. So that traveling band-scan would require hours of circumnavigation across the cities' east-west arterial roads. Let's not, and merely imagine that we did.

I'd like to start at the epicenter of this engineering miracle. Closest to the center of the MSA is WOOM. Initially the station was to be named WJFN-LP for Jefferson Hospital System who was to be involved with the station. But ultimately, they had to form their own non-profit entity. When Jefferson withdrew support, Randolph went with the call sign WOOM-LP for its Onomatopoeic qualities and design potential.

The station turns out to be amazing from an engineering perspective; 92.9 is a 4-way time share WOOM, WGGT, WRGU, and WRLG. But these 4 are merely the survivors of a large pool of applicants. WOOM is self-aware enough that they posted an interview online with station founder Chris Randolph. [I cannot recommend that interview strongly enough] He tells the origin story of WOOM, warts and all; complete with bogus civic groups, dishonest executives, dirty lawyers, and an unexpected bitcoin bonanza. It helps add color to the story of all the other stations at the epicenter of this radio market melee. He goes on in some detail:

"There were 4 applicants in Germantown who are obviously kind of planning to work together, and there was a group that was calling itself the NAACP, that was not actually the NAACP... a splinter group that had a variety of legal problems. There was an evangelical group in North Philly who were Latino and apparently connected to Senator Pat Toomey, and a variety of other groups as well."

The WJFN note is important because they were using those calls in 2014. Even Pirate Jim's Philly radio history page [LINK] specifically listed them under those calls at the time. From this applicant stage the FCC applies a 5-point scoring system. The FCC allows each applicant 'points' for meeting certain criteria. Applicants then can challenge every point lost to winnow the field. It's designed to be very competitive and applicants can normally only "win" through attrition. Agreeing to share time being the only other way out alive.

Writing for Radio Survivor, Paul Rismandel covered this situation in detail back in 2015. He identified the NAACP-related group as a Social Justice Law Project of the local NAACP chapter, and the evangelical group as Nueva Esperanza. both of groups filed petitions against the share. Their basis for the petition was that the four groups (G-Town Radio, Historic Germantown Preserved, Germantown Life Enrichment Center, and Germantown United Community Development Corporation) coordinated in advance of their filings. The FCC rejected that argument. So, Nueva Esperanza the objected to the scoring methodology. They claimed that groups should not be able to aggregate their points if they coordinated before filing. The FCC was completely clear in their response. They specifically said “There is no rule prohibiting LP FM applicants from filing separate applications with the goal of arriving at a timeshare agreement." You can read the Notices here.

Community Group	Hours	Facility ID	Callsign
Germantown Life Enrichment Center	10	195802	WRLG
South Philadelphia Rainbow Committee Community Center Inc.	60	196383	WOOM
G-Town Radio	88	192746	WGGT
Germantown United Community Development Corporation	10	195118	WRGU
Historic Germantown Preserved	N/A	196209	X
Nueva Esperanza, Inc.	24	193022	X
NAACP Social Justice Law Project	12	195646	X
Inge Davidson Foundation	N/A	193177	WZML

Cleverly, the Inge Davidson group filed an amendment to move their site into the suburbs to get away from this mess. Then the Germantown 4 became the Germantown 3. The Historic Germantown group disappeared. Randolph describes that group as having had a change in management and being "no longer interested in doing radio." WOOM tried to work with the social justice group briefly, and then teamed up with the remaining three Germantown groups combining their scores for a decisive win. Nueva Esperanza even went outside the proper process and got Senator Pat Toomey [R] to write a personal letter of support to the FCC, but that did not sway the bureau. Still unsatisfied, Nueva Esperanza then sued them all in Federal Court. The FCC's decision was affirmed.

Thus after a 2-year struggle, the 4-way share with the Germantown trio and WOOM won the day. More here. Back to the Chris Randolph interview itself for a moment. He also understood that the LP FM window owed a great debt to Radio Mutiny, the pirate radio project in West Philly. He gave them all due credit in his interview:

"The kernel of this goes back about 20 years to a project out of West Philly WPPR aka Radio Mutiny. Which gave birth to a number of things including the Prometheus radio Project right here in Philadelphia...  after this roughly 15-year struggle in the courts and through the passing of legislation that the FCC was finally going to open an application window for community groups for a low power FM, LP FM license."

So, the genesis of  this whole story lies in 91.3 WPPR, Radio Mutiny, a pirate radio station formerly based in West Philadelphia. They operated from 1996 to 1998 at about 20 watts. The station was founded by Pete Tridish, Ed Cummings and others. Mother Jones magazine went as far as to call him a 'Broadcasting Buccaneer." [More here] After the shut down Radio Mutiny led a protest and then sued the FCC to re-examine its media ownership rules. Then in a Christmas miracle... they actually won. This eventually led to the opening of the LP FM filing window. Every LP station in America owes it's existence to this lawsuit. More here.

But let's get back to Philly. Moving out to the the suburbs... the next closest station on 92.9 is in Upper Gwynedd, PA - according to radio-locator.com it's a Travelers' Info outlet. Then in a ring around the Philly suburbs is a ring of more LP stations all on 92.9, though not on any kind of share time arrangement.Those stations are as follows:

• WZML-LP is owned by the The Inge Davidson Foundation. An escapee of the situation in Germantown they are a volunteer organization who seems to mostly play a kind of deep catalog AC. I've tuned in a few times and caught U2, Bill Withers, Buffalo Springfield.  More here. they received their approval December 10th 2014.

• WEMK-LP is in Upper Gwynedd, PA at 27 watts - (Travelers' Info outlet) owned by Montgomery county, the antennas appears to be on the roof of the Volunteer Medical Service Corps of Lansdale building on the Jefferson Health campus. it signed on around March 26th 2014

• WLRI-LP is in Gap PA at 100 watts airing mostly Pacifica Radio Network programming. They first signed on in 10/27/2003 as WOMB, and then inexplicably proceeded to change call letters 24 more times for reasons unknown. They broadcast from Christiana, PA —an area largely unknown to Google Maps. More here.

Also sharing 92.9 in that MSA are a slew of FM repeaters. These clutter the radio band preventing even more LP FMs from signing on in the greater metropolitan area.

• W225CF up in Reading repeats the either the HD-2 or the HD-3 channel of 100.7 WLEV which is the same tropical music programming also carried by 1400 WEST-AM and 1600 WHOL-AM. When WOOM and the Germantown trio were first getting their CPs this was branded as "La Ola." On January 1st, 2017 the whole group rebranded as "Mega 99.5." RadioInsight dramatically referred to the format flip as "Spanish Wars" in 2017. More here.

• W225DJ in Burlington NJ repeats religious talk from 1460 WIFI-AM. It's coverage targets Levittown, PA. But WIFI's contour only rim-shots the Philly market otherwise as it's directional to the east protecting both 1480 WDAS-AM in Philly and 1490 WBCB-AM whose facilities are a mere 1.5 miles away in Levittown proper.

• W225BV regurgitates 90.7 WYRS religious talk, and in no way shape or form resides in the Philly market. Most of their signal goes crosses Atlantic City, NJ and out over the Atlantic ocean. WYRS's own signal points North East catching part of Tom's River on it's way to the beach.

Then to the South, in Smyrna, DE is 92.9 WRDX, a 1,700 watt Class A station with a Hot AC format, owned by iHeartRadio (Clear channel). It only signed on in 2007. Before the LP window they were Tom-FM. During the rigamarole, they re-branded as Mix-FM. Then in 2016 went back to being Tom as they remain to this day unaffected by the hi-jinks to the North. Their protected contour prevented this 92.9 LP snipe hunt from snaking down the coast into the Delmarva peninsula.