WINS relocated from the Hotel Lincoln to the WINS Building, 114 East 58th Street, June 19, 1932.
It changed its frequency from 1180 to 1000 on March 29, 1941 as part of the North American Regional Broadcasting Agreement and then eventually to 1010 on October 30, 1943. The Cincinnati-based Crosley Broadcasting Corporation announced its purchase of the station from Hearst in 1945,[5][6] though it would be over a year before Crosley would take control of WINS, in July 1946.
Crosley sold the station to J. Elroy McCaw's Gotham Broadcasting Corporation in 1953, and soon after WINS became one of the first stations in the United States to play rock and roll music.
Alan Freed was WINS earliest famous personality as disc jockey. Freed was followed years later by 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 1950s. Keiter is perhaps best remembered for his recreations of San Francisco (formerly New York) Giants baseball games, which WINS carried in 1958 to keep disconnected Giants fans in touch with their team, who moved west along with the Brooklyn Dodgers the previous year.
Lonny Starr, July 1962.
Murray ingratiated himself with the Beatles and promoted many rock and roll shows, like this one in Connecticut, an early concert with the Rolling Stones.
While WMCA was only 5000 watts, it was at the bottom end of the dial, which advantages coverage. The other three were all 50000 watts, but only WABC was both non-directional and a clear channel station. Being lower on the dial than the others, it also had more coverage. Of those three, WINS was the most directional (aimed straight at New York's inner boroughs), with a weaker signal than the others toward the New Jersey suburbs and the Jersey Shore.
In 1962, WMGM defected to a beautiful music format under its previous call letters, WHN, while WINS was purchased by the Westinghouse Electric Corporation. WMCA became the top-rated top 40 station in the New York area by 1963, then WABC became the dominant Top 40 station in the whole market by 1965. WINS bowed out of Top 40 competition with the song "Out in the Streets", by The Shangri-Las, on April 18, 1965, at around 8 PM.
This is Mad Daddy (Pete Myers) on October 30, 1964 doing his speed-talking thing, with lots of echo, Monster Mash type bubble sound effects, a lot of bad rhyming raps and some long jingles, but also some pretty good music. [ LISTEN ] (12:40)
On April 19, 1965, after weeks of speculation, WINS changed its format radically. It became the third radio station in the United States to attempt all-news programming, going with the new format around the clock. WINS immediately established a template for its format with an easily identifiable, distinctive Teletype sound effect playing in the background (Most other all-news stations later dropped this, but WINS continues to use it to this day despite Teletype machines themselves becoming obsolete by the mid-1980s).
Some closing segments in April 1965 as the station undergoes a major format change. Among the jocks heard are Murray the K., Mad Daddy, Lacy, Steve Woodwin, Mickey O'Hara, Ken Dryland, Joel Sebastian and Johnny Holliday. Jim Gordon delivers the first newscast of the WINS all-news format. And Dan Ingram steers listeners to WABC. [ LISTEN ] (23:01)
On air schedule from 1957 to 1965.
