WHFS (historic) - 1960s

1960s

WHFS began broadcasting on November 11, 1961, on 102.3 FM in Bethesda, Maryland. It was the first station in the Washington, DC, area to broadcast in FM stereo, thus its call sign stood for High Fidelity Stereo. It was originally located in a 20 × 20-foot space in the basement of the Bethesda Medical Building on Wisconsin Avenue with antenna on the roof. Its original format was a combination of MOR and classical, with jazz after 10 p.m. The original owners were considerably underfunded, and the station was sold in 1963. The station was initially moved to Norfolk Ave. in Bethesda and later to Woodmont Ave. All these locations are within a three-block area. When Jacob Einstein became general manager and part-owner in 1967, the station had a broadcast signal of 2,300 watts.

"When Mr. Einstein became general manager of WHFS, the station had been on the air for six years and was lucky to draw 800 listeners a night with its format of pop, light classical and jazz. 'Then a guy named Frank Richards came in one day wearing cutoffs and a leather vest, played me a tape of rock music from Los Angeles,' Mr. Einstein told The Washington Post in 1983. 'We were losing so much money that another couple of dollars couldn't hurt, right? So we put him on. My God, the calls! I never knew we had an audience!' In 1969, three would-be DJs - Joshua Brooks, Sara Vass and Mark Gorbulew - approached Mr. Einstein with an idea for a free-form rock-and-roll program. They went on under the name Spiritus Cheese (derived from a cheese company in New York), and a new era was born. 'It was Jake's vision that FM radio and rock-and-roll were about to collide,' said Mr. Einstein's daughter Rose, who briefly worked at WHFS. 'He saw it as an all-night format that would sustain a station.' Within months, WHFS was drawing an average nightly audience of 32,700 listeners. Spiritus Cheese lasted just a year - someone complained about a four-letter word in a Firesign Theatre skit broadcast on the air - but by then the station had found its niche."