WPLJ (95.5 FM) is a non-commercial Christian adult contemporary music radio station licensed to New York City. It is owned by the Educational Media Foundation (EMF) and broadcasts EMF's flagship programming service, K-Love. WPLJ's transmitter is located at the Empire State Building and broadcasts four HD Radio digital subchannels in addition to its analog transmission. History As WABC-FM The station went on the air on May 4, 1948, under the call sign WJZ-FM. In March 1953, the station's call letters were changed to WABC-FM following the merger of the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) with United Paramount Theatres. As most FM stations did during the medium's formative years, 95.5 FM simulcast the programming of its AM sister station, WJZ/WABC (770 AM). In the early 1960s, however, WABC-FM began to program itself separately from WABC (AM). During the 1962–63 New York City newspaper strike, the station programmed news for 17 hours daily. Two-and-a-half years before WINS launched its own around-the-clock, all-news format in April 1965, it was the first such attempt in the New York market. This was followed by stints with Broadway show tunes and general freeform programming, including broadcasts of New York Mets baseball games. WABC's AM personalities, such as Dan Ingram, Chuck Leonard, and Bob Lewis, hosted programs on the FM side which were the total opposites of the top 40-powered sound for which they were better known on AM. WABC-FM continued to simulcast its AM sister station during Herb Oscar Anderson's morning drive program. At the start of 1968, ABC split its radio network into four distinct components, one of which was dedicated to FM radio. The following year, WABC-FM and its sister stations — KABC-FM in Los Angeles; WLS-FM in Chicago; KGO-FM in San Francisco; WXYZ-FM in Detroit; KQV-FM in Pittsburgh; and newly acquired KXYZ-FM in Houston — began carrying an automated, youth-oriented, progressive rock format known as Love. As WPLJ Album rock era (1971–1983) In late 1970, Allen Shaw, the then-president of ABC's FM station group, announced two big changes to take place in early 1971: ABC dropped Love and installed completely live-and-local, freeform rock formats. The network also applied for call letter changes for the seven stations. The New York outlet was slated to be renamed WRIF, but a clerical error on the part of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) resulted in those calls being awarded to the former WXYZ-FM in Detroit — whose own