WNTJ

WNTJ (1490 AM, "News Talk 1490") is a radio station licensed to serve Johnstown, Pennsylvania, USA. The station, established in 1946, is currently owned by Forever Broadcasting LLC.

It broadcasts a news/talk radio format including Pittsburgh Pirates baseball, Pittsburgh Penguins hockey, Pittsburgh Steelers football and select Fox News Radio programming.

The station was assigned the WNTJ call letters by the Federal Communications Commission on May 8, 2008. Prior to 2008, this station was home to ESPN Radio affiliate WPRR, and before that, was the first home for WNTJ.

History: beginnings as WARD

First coming on the air in 1948, this station began as WARD. Over the next decade, WARD would be joined by an FM station: WARD-FM/96.5 (now WFGI-FM at 95.5), and a UHF television station:WARD-TV/56 (now on virtual channel 19 as WPCW).

For many years, these three stations would be under common ownership, and operating as affiliates of the CBS radio and television networks. The call letters for all three were changed from WARD to WJNL following its acquisition by Johnstown-based Jonel Construction Company in 1970. This station was typical of one owned with a TV station, programming a full-service format with heavy emphasis on local news. This business model continued into the start of the 1980s, when the organization fell onto hard times. It began with the downturn of WJNL-TV, which lost its CBS affiliation to WTAJ after the Johnstown and Altoona TV markets were merged into one. The radio stations, already crippled by the fall of Johnstown's lucrative coal and steel industries, were unable to sustain the TV station's sudden drop in revenue, and the TV station was eventually sold off, leaving WJNL-AM/FM to continue on.