NYC Radio: Secular WPLJ Signs-Off

After 48 years, beloved radio station WPLJ 95.5 FM signed-off Friday.

The last song broadcast from the top of Madison Square Garden was John Lennon’s “Imagine,” released in 1971, the same year the station went on the air.

DJ Mike Allan also spun a WPLJ tribute song by Hall and Oates, and — just before the stroke of the station’s 7 p.m. demise — a fitting snippet from the Beatles’ “The End”: “And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.”

The station was one of six purchased for $103 million by the Educational Media Foundation, a religious-programming group.

It was fitting for Lennon to serenade WPLJ’s end.

The station mourned Lennon’s Dec. 8, 1980, murder with days of round-the-clock Beatles music, followed by 15 minutes of silence, as requested by his widow, Yoko Ono.



As of 7pm Friday, the station joined the K-LOVE network, and will now broadcast Christian contemporary music. K-Love's first piece of audio was a request for listener financial support.