With FM radio and now satellite radio dominating the market, the shifting climate for electronic media has claimed another victim: WAMD 970 AM.

The longtime radio station based out of Aberdeen went dark on Sunday, about a year after being bought by Salem Communications and losing almost all of its local staff.

For some of those who worked at the station through the years, its silence is a reminder of a time when Harford County residents turned to radio for a truly local take on things.

“We were the first AM-stereo radio station in this part of the country. We took innovative steps to try to be a step above other radio stations,” James “Capt’n Jim” McMahan, a county councilman who owned the station from 1978 until his retirement in 2003, said. “We were always dedicated to a strong news-gathering operation.”

WAMD first hit the airwaves on May 1, 1957, with a power of 500 watts.

It was run as HC Broadcasting Company, on Bel Air Avenue, by Larry Allen until he sold it to McMahan in 1978.

“I spent a lifetime, over 40 years in broadcasting, 36 of them in Harford County,” McMahan noted.

He chose to come to WAMD after working at WVOB, in Bel Air, partly because “it was a full-time station, which meant it operated 24 hours a day and it was also double the power,” he said. “My emphasis was on news and information, and we built that at VOB and I wanted to continue that over in Aberdeen. In my tenure of 26 years at WAMD, we won over 20 [Associated Press] awards for news.”

The station “obviously” changed as the years went on, McMahan said, as it became an entirely music format.

“In 1978, we changed the format from a mish-mosh to a format of adult contemporary, popular songs of the late 1960s,” he said.

That shifted to talk radio for a while, before becoming oldies, which the station retained until it went off the air.

The M.O. at McMahan’s WAMD was also a little different than at contemporary stations with syndicated programming.

“The public was always welcome on the air,” he said. “I never had a delay broadcast system. Never once did anybody ever step over the line and say a dirty word. I just knew my audience respected the station.”

Under McMahan’s supervision, the station filled a certain niche, said Warren Monks, who had worked on and off at the station since 1994.

“I am really sad that the station went off the air. There was a lot of good feelings toward WAMD when Capt’n Jim had it,” he said. “He played to his audience.”

Monks was program director at the station for three years and led several programs, most recently the political “Word On the Street: Conservative Voices of Northeast Maryland,” which ran from May 2006 until the end of 2008.

“When I was growing up in high school, I used to listen to WAMD,” said Monks, who went to Aberdeen High School and now lives in Bel Air. “It was a personally great thrill to be a broadcaster there.”

He said the station had fallen behind in recent years.

“One of the things I used to call WAMD was the dinosaur in the cornfield, because we were using 1960s equipment and we were out in the cornfield,” he said.

Nevertheless, the station made a contribution to the county, he said.

“In the ‘60s and ‘70s, there used to be shows for the local farmers. There used to be a lot of local interest stuff you are not getting anymore,” he said.

Monks noted the station also used to broadcast Orioles baseball, Colts football and the Aberdeen IronBirds, filling a niche when WBAL did not reach the Harford County market.

Salem Communications, a media company specializing in evangelical Christian and conservative political radio based in Camarillo, Calif., bought the station in January 2008 and cut its power to 350 watts.

“Salem took over and pretty much everyone who was there left,” Monks recalled.

McMahan, however, noted the license is still viable, as WAMD can still operate at 350 watts and “I have gotten the impression that Salem might even, with the proper safeguards in place, may be amenable to that.”

Still, “they are an absentee owner. They don’t have any local input,” he said. “I was hoping they would put a local team in here.”

He said he would like to see the Cal Ripken operation get involved in the station.

The silencing of WAMD “takes another voice of democracy away,” he said. “It’s one less point of view and that is dangerous in a democracy.”

Chuck Jackson, who worked at nearby WVOB, wrote in a letter that the closing of WAMD is “a sad day” for those who work or worked in broadcasting.

“I was a frequent listener when I traveled in Harford County,” Jackson said in a phone interview about WAMD, noting that he attended McMahan’s retirement party in 2003.

“It’s just a sad day that another piece of our past is going on the shelf, and although the station has gone, the memories are going to live on forever in all of our hearts,” he said.

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