This article is about the current talk-formatted AM station on 1580 kHz. For the former FM stations on 99.1, 102.3, and 105.7, see WHFS .

WHFS (1580 AM, "Big Talker 1580") is a radio station broadcasting a Talk format. Licensed to the suburb of Morningside, Maryland, it serves the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. It first began broadcasting in 1954 under the call sign WPGC, which remained in place until 2008. The station is currently owned by CBS Radio.

History

On November 12, 1953, former FCC employee Harry Hayman received a construction permit for a radio station in Morningside operating at 250 watts daytime-only on 1580 kilohertz. The call letters WPGC, representing Prince Georges County were issued soon afterwards.The station switched to a business talk format in 1988.Infinity Broadcasting acquired the WPGC stations from Cook Inlet in June 1994 for $60 million. The next year, the station returned to music programming as "Flava 1580", with an all hip-hop/go-go format. The format was unsuccessful, and ultimately evolved to gospel in November 1996 as "Heaven 1580". After briefly simulcasting sister station WPGC-FM, the station dropped its original callsign in favor of the WHFS call letters.

On November 3, 2008, WHFS FM, which had been broadcasting on 105.7 MHz, flipped to a sports talk format similar to that of sister station WFAN in New York City and dropped the WHFS call sign for WJZ-FM. On November 10, 2008, the WHFS callsign was moved to 1580 kHz which dropped its long time call letters of WPGC. The format was changed to talk, with programs hosted by Michael Smerconish (from sister station WPHT), Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly, Lou Dobbs, and Laura Schlessinger. The station does not generate enough of a listen rating to appear in Arbitron's rating books.

External links

• WPGC tribute site