City | Cleveland, Ohio |
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Broadcast area | Greater Cleveland |
Branding | Praise 1300 |
Slogan | Cleveland's Inspiration Station |
Frequency | 1300 kHz |
Translator(s) | W233CG 94.5 Cleveland |
Repeater(s) | 93.1 MHz WZAK-HD2 |
First air date | July 6, 1949 |
Format | Urban gospel/talk |
Power | 5,000 watts (unlimited) |
Class | B |
Facility ID | 41389 |
Transmitter coordinates | 41°20′28.00″N 81°44′30.00″W / 41.3411111°N 81.7416667°W |
Former callsigns | WERE (1949–2007) |
Affiliations | Rocket Sports Radio Network |
Owner |
Radio One, Inc. (Blue Chip Broadcasting Licenses, Ltd.) |
Sister stations | WENZ, WERE, WZAK |
Webcast | Listen Live |
Website | praisecleveland |
WJMO (1300 AM) – branded Praise 1300 – is a commercial urban gospel/talk radio station licensed to Cleveland, Ohio. Owned by Radio One, the station serves Greater Cleveland. Its studios are located along the Euclid Avenue Corridor in Cleveland's east side, while the station transmitter resides in the Cleveland suburb of Parma.
WJMO began as WERE on July 6, 1949, broadcasting as 1300 kHz. Unlike most AM stations of the time, WERE actually went on the air a year after its FM sister station, WERE-FM at 98.5 MHz. Both stations lasted under common ownership for the next fifty years, as WERE-FM primarily simulcast the programming of its more popular AM sister station over the next 24 years, where it went into separate programming as WGCL.
During the 1950s, WERE was the first popular Top 40 station in the market, spearheaded by now-legendary personalities like Bill Randle, "Captain" Carl Reese, Phil McLean, Ronnie Barrett, Howie Lund and Bob Forster. Randle was the most influential of the group, as he was the first major-market disk jockey in the Northeast United States to play Elvis Presley, and bolstered the careers of a number of young musicians, including The Four Lads, Bobby Darin, and Fats Domino. Future NBC announcer and voice-over artist Danny Dark also was a host on WERE in the early 1960s.
WERE had obtained a construction permit in the mid-1950s for WERE-TV on channel 65. However, due to the obscurity of the UHF dial at the time, the television station never made it on the air.