City Washington, D.C. First air date 1948 (as WFAN) HAAT 149 meters Frequency 100.3 MHz Owner iHeartMedia Inc Branding Big 100.3 Sister stations WWDC, WMZQ-FM, WASH, WIHT | Broadcast area Washington, D.C. ERP 50,000 watts Facility ID 54459 Format Classic rock, Asia Area Washington, D.C. Slogan Bigger. Better. Big 100.3 | |
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WBIG-FM, or "Big 100," is a classic rock radio station serving the Washington, D.C., United States area. It formerly went by the slogan "Big 100.3", and before that, "Oldies 100." It is owned by iHeartMedia, Inc.. It plays music from the late 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s. The station's studios are located in Rockville, Maryland and the transmitter site is in Falls Church, Virginia.
WBIG-FM broadcasts in the HD Radio format.
History
Prior to becoming WBIG, it was Washington's first FM Spanish-language station as WFAN, later Washington's first FM urban contemporary station as WOOK-FM ("OK100"), and then as WDJY "DJ100". For several years in the early 1990s it featured an eclectic smooth jazz format as WJZE ("Jazzy 100"). The station was acquired by Colfax Broadcasting and adopted the oldies format at 4 p.m. on June 3, 1993. After a series of mergers and trades, WBIG was sold to Clear Channel in 2000 and changed its branding to "Big 100".
WBIG "evolved" from an oldies format to classic hits (1970s and early 1980s) on April 3, 2006. This was accompanied with a slight branding change to "Big 100.3". The changeover was not announced, and the new format followed Jack FM's lead by removing several announcers. Jeff "Goldy" Gold, who spent 12 years at WBIG, was the morning host at WFVL in Fayetteville, N.C. from September 2005 to February 2009. Since 2012, Goldy has been the host of Good Morning Fayetteville on News/Talk 640 WFNC. Kathy Whiteside now does mid-days at Lite FM in Baltimore, Johnny Dark works at WTTR AM in Westminster, Maryland, and Ira Melman worked for a while at WTOP-FM in DC, and now works for VOA, the Voice of America, in Washington.
WBIG was the first station in the U.S. to work directly with a Beatle. Ringo Starr hosted and voiced the commercials for the "BIG Ringo Starr Art Show" in March 2007. It was the first time that artwork from all four Beatles appeared in the same exhibition. Proceeds from the sales of art benefited Ringo's charity The Lotus Foundations. The station converted their website from idigbig.com to idigringo.com and changed the graphics to reflect Ringo's participation, including home videos provided by Ringo.
After the spring 2009 format change of rival classic rock station WTGB (now WIAD) to adult contemporary, WBIG-FM tried to appease listeners of WTGB by shifting to a musical position in between light classic hits and slightly heavier classic rock but still not becoming a full-fledged classic rock station. Four months later, oldies outlet WJZW (now WMAL-FM) flipped to mainstream rock (mostly heavy classic rock with a few newer songs). Throughout 2010, WVRX slowly siphoned listeners from WBIG, especially in WVRX's target demographic of men 25-54. By the third week of August, 2010, WBIG had plummeted to 14th in the overall Arbitron radio ratings; it had been hovering around 8th place since the demise of WTGB. Accordingly, on August 30, 2010, the station fired its last on-air morning show staff: morning man Jon Ballard and news anchor Bill Stabler. After being fired, Ballard called into Elliot in the Morning (based at sister station DC101 WWDC, where Ballard worked afternoons until 2006) and began to discuss the incident with Elliot Segal. Reportedly, although Ballard did not criticize WBIG-FM or Clear Channel, WWDC management cut off the conversation by ending the show early and "dumping" to music, a process normally used to avoid content that would garner FCC fines. After Ballard's firing, the station shifted its playlist completely to classic rock, and began promoting the fact that it was now DJ-less. In October, the DJ's returned; with Lisa Berigan doing middays, Doc Reno doing afternoon drive, and Big Rig doing nights. On November 20th, Tommy Griffiths would take the station's morning shift.
In July 2016, "Big 100.3" reverted back to the "Big 100" branding.