97.9 The Hill WCHL Celebrates 69 Years of Serving Our Community

Happy birthday to 97.9 The Hill!

WCHL first began broadcasting on January 25, 1953 — 69 years ago today! As Chapel Hill’s oldest continuous broadcaster, 97.9 The Hill is proud to carry the torch for generations of listeners, readers and neighbors from across the decades. Our community-based coverage available on our freely and easily accessible airwaves sets us apart — broadcasting news, sports, music and a whole lot more 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Featured on air and on Chapelboro.com, we offer local news, interviews and sports broadcasting from UNC and local high schools alike. As the flagship station for Tar Heel sports, 97.9 The Hill WCHL provides local listeners with access to UNC football, basketball, baseball, and soccer games and plenty of pre-and-post-game coverage from the personalities and experts our audience has come to know and love.

It’s been an honor to be recognized both as a friendly local news outlet and as an award-winning station in two concurrent NCAB awards cycles, and we look forward to many years to come as we continue to do what we do best: being your hometown radio station.

You can find the full story, our current broadcast features and an entire photo gallery on our Radio Homepage, but here’s a short account of our history since 1953:

Local businessman and Chapel Hill mayor Sandy McClamroch initially owned the 1,000-watt AM station, which focused on covering local news in the Chapel Hill township. The radio station served as the start of the Village Broadcasting Companies, which eventually turned into Vilcom, and served the community by playing top 40 music and talk shows in addition to local news coverage.

After being sold by Vilcom to Curtis Media in 1997, the company regained control of WCHL in 2002 and brought it back to Chapel Hill after a brief relocation to Durham. Rudd Media and the Chapel Hill Media Group purchased WCHL in 2015, switching the station’s format to incorporate music into a lineup of live shows each weekday morning and afternoon.

Over the years, WCHL has helped launch the careers of nationally recognized broadcasters and journalists. Television Academy Hall-of-Famer Charles Kuralt and sportscaster Jim Lampley both worked at the radio station while students at UNC. Additionally, broadcasters like Tar Heel Sports announcer Woody Durham, television host Ty Boyd and longtime morning show host Ron Stutts have all graced WCHL’s airwaves over its many years.

Today, WCHL is 97.9 The Hill, available on FM (97.9) and AM (1360) radio and headquartered in the University Place mall. We continue to serve excellent programming to the Chapel Hill/Carrboro community and Orange County region, like local news, sports and talk shows, in addition to alternative music and CBS News reports.

 

 

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