WOBM (AM)

The station began life in 1926 as WDWM in Newark; it moved to Asbury Park as WCAP (for City of Asbury Park) in 1928.[2] In 1950, the station was purchased by the Asbury Park Press and renamed WJLK[2] as a sister station to WJLK-FM, which the newspaper placed on the air on November 20, 1947. The stations emphasized news coverage, using the paper's resources to produce 15-minute newscasts at the top of each hour, and a wide variety of programs including various types of music, talk and interviews.

In 1989, the newspaper sold the two stations to Devlin and Ferrari Broadcasting Company of New York for $12.5 million. The ownership changed again and during the time between the sale by the Press and the present day, various formats were tried, including oldies, big band music and country.

The station held the WJLK call sign until November 4, 1996, and was called WADB from that date until September 18, 2008.[3] The WADB call letters previously belonged to the first station to occupy the FM frequency of 95.9 MHz and licensed to Point Pleasant, New Jersey. That station was started in the fall of 1968 by the Adamant Brown of Rumson; the call letters stood for Adamant and Dorothy Brown (his wife). WADB (FM) featured a beautiful music format at its inception with very few deviations from that format until September 1996 when new owners changed the call letters to WRAT and adopted an active rock format.

On June 25, 2007, WADB became a full-time ESPN Deportes Radio affiliate, broadcasting sports programming in Spanish. Six months later, in January 2008, it became a Fox Sports Radio affiliate and adopted the slogan "National Sports with a Shore View". WADB mostly broadcast Fox Sports Radio programming. The station also broadcasts Lakewood BlueClaws minor league baseball along with sister station WOBM.

Millennium Radio renamed the station WBUD on September 18, 2008, before changing the name back to WADB on June 4, 2009.[3] For most of the period since 1952, the WBUD call letters were used by the radio station at 1260 kHz in Trenton, New Jersey. Millennium Radio moved the call letters to Asbury Park when the Trenton operation was sold to a religious broadcaster. According to the Federal Communications Commission database, there is a low-power TV station serving Atlanta, Georgia, using the call letters WBUD-LD. The WJLK call letters remain on 94.3 FM.

On September 3, 2010, WADB changed its format to oldies, simulcasting WOBM. Both stations continue to broadcast Lakewood BlueClaws minor league baseball and play-by-play of high school sports. On May 19, 2014, WADB changed its format news/talk.[4] On January 3, 2017, WADB returned to an oldies format, branded as "Beach Radio".[5]

On February 1, 2022, at 10 a.m., after playing "Thunder Road" by Bruce Springsteen, WADB changed its format from oldies to country, branded as "Cat Country 96.7/104.1", with the first song being "Cold as You" by Luke Combs. The "Cat Country" branding was shared with Atlantic City sister station WPUR.[6]

On July 10, 2023, WADB dropped the country format and began simulcasting the adult contemporary format of WOBM-FM, expanding that station's coverage of Monmouth County; the format change also ended the simulcast with WOBM AM, which began simulcasting WJLK.[7] The "Cat Country Jersey Shore" website was then redirected to the WPUR website.[8] WADB's call sign was changed to WOBM on July 31, 2023.[9]

• WOBM in the FCC AM station database
• WOBM on Radio-Locator
• WOBM in Nielsen Audio's AM station database
• W244EE in the FCC FM station database
• W244EE on Radio-Locator
• FCC History Cards for WOBM