WPDH
WPDH is a commercial radio station licensed to Poughkeepsie, New York, and serving the Kiryas Joel–Poughkeepsie–Newburgh metropolitan area. The station is owned by Townsquare Media and broadcasts a classic rock radio format. Its studios and offices are on Pendell Road in Poughkeepsie.
WPDH has an effective radiated power of 4,400 watts. Its transmitter site is on Illinois Mountain in Highland, New York. WPDH is also simulcast on a class A station, 106.1 WPDA in Jeffersonville, New York. Several translators relay WPDH's digital subchannels.
History
WEOK-FM
In 1962, the station signed on as WEOK-FM, sister station to WEOK. The main purpose of the station at the outset was to provide Muzak programming to area offices and stores via its subcarrier. By day, WPDH simulcast the AM's middle of the road format, with block programming airing between the AM's sign off and 10:00 p.m.In 1972, WEOK AM and FM were sold to the Dyson family and with the sale came key changes to the FM side. The transmitter moved from a site in Milton to the Illinois Mountain site. It upgraded to a full Class B signal and added FM stereo capabilities in the process.
Country Music to AOR
At the end of these upgrades, it relaunched as country music formatted WPDH. With poor ratings playing country music, management saw a hole for an album-oriented rock station in the Hudson Valley. In 1976 WPDH abandoned country for rock music.Classic Rock
WPDH spent the latter part of 1994 and early 1995 evolving to Classic rock.Rob Dyson sold the Crystal Radio Group to Aurora Communications in 2001 which, in turn was acquired by Cumulus Media in 2002. Amid an extended drop in ratings, WPDH was relaunched as a mainstream rock station over Labor Day weekend 2003.
In January 2012, Andrew Boris, program director of sister station WRRV, became the new program director of WPDH.
No formula changes in the programming were enacted. Boris later began hosting the morning drive time show, in addition to his PD duties.
Changes in Ownership
On August 30, 2013, a deal was announced in which Cumulus would swap its stations in Dubuque, Iowa, and Poughkeepsie to Townsquare Media in exchange for Peak Broadcasting's Fresno, California stations. The deal was part of Cumulus' acquisition of Dial Global. Townsquare, Peak, and Dial Global are all controlled by Oaktree Capital Management.The sale to Townsquare was completed on November 14, 2013.
Notable alumni
- Mike Breen, sportcaster, began his career on WPDH/WEOK around 1982-83, reading the news in the morning. Later, news/sports sidekick for Imus in the morning on NBC, play-by-play commentator for the NBA on ABC and the lead commentator for New York Knicks games on the MSG network. He also works NBA games for ESPN, and was formerly a play-by-play announcer for New York Giants preseason games, as well as for regular season NFL games on both Fox and NBC.
- Freddie Coleman, now of GameNight on ESPN Radio, entered radio at WPDH as music director and overnight host, later working at sister station WCZX.
- Dead Air Dave started his on-air career at WPDH, years before becoming a personality on 92.3 K-Rock New York and later adding dump button duties for The Howard Stern Show.
- Jay Reynolds, ESPN Radio; spent time at WPDH as news anchor & news director.
HD Radio
Cumulus Broadcasting began upgrading its stations to HD Radio broadcasting in 2005. One of the first ten stations to be upgraded was WPDH.WPDH uses its HD2 digital subchannel to rebroadcast co-owned oldies WALL 1340 AM and its HD3 subchannel to rebroadcast Spanish adult hits WEOK 1390 AM.