WMBM

WAHR signed on the air October 31, 1954. Owned by and named for Alan Henry Rosenson,[2] the station aired a continuous music format. Rosenson owned WLRD (93.9 FM), which changed its call letters to WAHR-FM in 1956.[3]

The manager of the station hired a young man, Larry Zeiger, to perform miscellaneous clean-up tasks. When one of the station's announcers suddenly quit, Zeiger was put on the air; Simmons suggested that Zeiger's last name was too ethnic, so he became Larry King.[4] King would become the station's sports director, leaving in 1958 for WKAT.[5]

Rosenson sold WAHR-AM-FM to Community Service Broadcasters in 1958.[6] After the $150,000 purchase, the new ownership—most of which hailed from Cincinnati—changed the call letters to WMET, continuing a format emphasizing news, sports and adult music.[7] WMET eventually became a full-time Spanish-language outlet, the first in South Florida. In 1961, the owners of daytime-only station WMBM (1220 AM), Florida's first black radio station—which in turn had just absorbed the call letters and some talent of the previous WMBM at 790 AM[8]—agreed to a deal with Latin Broadcasting Company to swap facilities.[9] The deal was finalized and announced in March 1962; Consolidated Communications, which owned WMBM, paid $253,000 to acquire the WMET-AM-FM facility.[10]

On April 3, 1962, the WMET intellectual unit moved to 1220 kHz, and 1490 (and 93.9 FM) received a relocated WMBM.[11] WMBM went on to develop a large and popular history as Miami's premier AM station for rhythm and blues, gospel, jazz and programming targeted to an African-American audience. Noted jazz broadcaster China Valles had a popular show on the station.[12] In its 1960s heyday, the station attempted a Thanksgiving turkey giveaway which clogged the MacArthur Causeway with drivers from Overtown seeking free turkeys.[13] Motivational speaker Les Brown was a disc jockey on WMBM.

In 1992, Eddie Margolis bought WMBM from his father. After a failed half-Haitian, half-gospel format, the station flipped to talk in 1993[13] and briefly adopted the call letters WSBH. On March 10, 1995, the station returned to a gospel format, as it had for much of the 1980s, and the WMBM call letters.[14]