WALE

WALE (990 AM is a radio station licensed to the community of Greenville, Rhode Island, and serving the Providence, Rhode Island, area. The station is owned by Cumbre Communications Corp. It airs a variety format.

WLKW

WLKW began official broadcasting on April 12, 1961 as Rhode Island's only 50 kW radio station during daylight hours only. This fact was noted in the calls as "LKW" really reads as "50 (L in Roman Numerals) KiloWatts" (sic). For most of its life the station's format was easy listening, which is how the calls are associated today (now the calls exist on 1450-West Warwick).

As WALE

The station acquired the current WALE call sign from the Federal Communications Commission on July 24, 1989.. The original WALE callsign was held for some 25 or so years by a different company operating out of the basement of an abandoned theater in Fall River, Mass. Colonel Milton Mittler (formerly of WADK) was the owner.

When Francis Battaglia's North American Broadcasting Company bought WEAN, they attempted to program a talk format. As the 1990s wore on, the station added more & more brokered programming until the station aired nothing but brokered programming.

WALE was sold at a bankruptcy auction in 2003 to Cumbre Communications, where it reemerged as "Supermax 990", a Spanish-language format.

Cumbre Communications declared bankruptcy in 2004 to try to avoid completing their purchase of the station - after they learned the transmitter site had serious environmental issues[http://www.fybush.com/NERW/2004/040223/nerw.html].

WALE went silent on December 29, 2006 & returned to the airwaves in late 2007 at half power. In January 2008, the station requested permission to go silent again based on a technical problem causing the transmitter to consume too much power that made the station "economically unfeasible" to operate. The FCC rejected that request.[http://fjallfoss.fcc.gov/cgi-bin/ws.exe/prod/cdbs/forms/prod/cdbsmenu.hts?context=25&appn=101167700&formid=910&fac_num=49128]. According to the filing, Cumbre Communications is still in bankruptcy ("debtor is possession").

The station was most recently airing a Spanish-language adult contemporary format as "Amor 990" (Love 990), but the web site for the station no longer exists.

The station was an affiliate of the Red Sox Beisbol Network in 2005 & 2008.

In 2009, it went back on the air as WALE ABC Radio News Now 990 & became an affiliate of ABC. For a brief period, they broadcast an audio feed of WLNE's 24-hour cable news channel, NewsChannel 5, in various timeslots. On Labor Day, WALE carried WLNE's entire broadcast of the Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon, which was being simulcast on "NewsChannel 5."