WXLA


WXLA is a commercial AM radio station licensed to Dimondale, a suburb of Lansing, Michigan. It is owned by MacDonald Broadcasting and airs a soft oldies and adult standards radio format. It uses the slogan "Timeless Classics" with its programming supplied by Westwood One's "America's Best Music" service.
The station is a daytimer, broadcasting at 10,000 watts during daylight hours. During the two hours after sunrise and two hours before sunset it cuts back to 2,000 watts. For some months of the year, WXLA is authorized to broadcast at 500 watts starting at 6 AM local time under Pre-sunrise authorization. WXLA must sign-off at sunset to protect Class A clear channel station WHAM in Rochester, New York. The transmitter is off Grovenburg Road in Lansing.

History

WXLA began broadcasting on September 20, 1982 as WDTB. It originally broadcast on 1170 kHz with 1,000 watts, days only. It used the all news programming of CNN Headline News. The call letters were changed to the present WXLA on June 29, 1984.
WXLA was the first radio station to program specifically to Lansing's African-American community with an urban contemporary / R&B format. In July 2005 the station increased its power and began referring to itself as 10,000 Watt 1180. With its new directional antenna, the station could be heard as far away as Grand Rapids, Bay City and Flint.
In 2006, MacDonald Broadcasting purchased WXLA and sister station 96.5 WQHH for $3.65 million. MacDonald switched from the urban adult contemporary format to ABC Radio's "Timeless" Middle of the Road/Oldies/Adult Standards format in October 2006. The Timeless Classics format had previously aired on co-owned "Unforgettable 1320" WILS and was moved to WXLA to make room for a new talk format on WILS.
In 2010, with the demise of Citadel Media's Timeless format, WXLA flipped to Dial Global's "America's Best Music" format, which features many of the same songs that Timeless played but also incorporated more traditional adult standards material and pre-1960s hits. Despite the fact that the actual "Timeless Favorites" format is no more, WXLA continues to use the phrase "Timeless Favorites" in its imaging.