By day, WPIT is powered at 5,000 watts; because 730 AM is a Canadian and Mexicanclear channel frequency WPIT must reduce power to only 24 watts at night, to avoid interference. The transmitter is off Mount Troy Road in Pittsburgh.[3] The station's antenna system uses a single tower that results in an omnidirectional signal pattern. According to the Antenna Structure Registration database, the tower is 99 m (325 ft) tall.[4] Programming is also heard on 250 watt FM translatorW243CW at 96.5 MHz.[5]
WPIT's studios were once located on Smithfield Street in downtown Pittsburgh. A neon sign reading "WPIT DIAL 730" hung outside their former location for years after they had moved out, well into the early 1980s. The station moved to Gateway Towers in downtown Pittsburgh around 1980, next door to the KDKA and KDKA-TV home of One Gateway Center.
In September 1991, Richard Rossi began broadcasting his nightly radio show Rich Rossi Live on Pittsburgh's WPIT-FM. The program created controversy when Rossi challenged the sale of WPIT to Salem, calling Christian radio and other evangelical churches "whores" who sell out the gospel for money.[7]
WPIT has had only three managers in its long history. Michael Komichak, who also built the station back in 1947 and did much of its engineering work, Chuck Gratner, who assumed control of WPIT-AM and FM after both were sold to Salem in 1993, and then-sales manager Tom Lemmon, who became General Manager following Gratner's retirement in 2014.
After Salem's takeover, old policies against atheist guests were lifted and Richard Dawkins has even appeared on air. Once the sale to Salem was complete, the operations of WPIT and WORD-FM moved up to Seven Parkway Center in Greentree, just outside the Pittsburgh city limits.
WPIT had some secular conservative talk programming in its lineup (Dr. Laura, Michael Medved, and Hugh Hewitt), but religious programming continues to fill most of the station's hours. For many years, WPIT has also aired foreign-language and ethnic programming on weekends.
