WAMU 88.5 history

Bluegrass broadcasting really took off in 1970, as Jerry Gray started his country music show and Gary introduced a three-hour bluegrass show on Saturday morning.

Despite its humble beginnings, 1973 proved to be a noteworthy year in the station’s history when it became the first public radio station to broadcast 24 hours a day.

“Bluegrass Country” arrived at WAMU in 1980, as the title of an afternoon show hosted by Jerry Gray.

The station dropped the -FM suffix in 1981.

WAMU – Society for the Preservation of Bluegrass Music in America (SPBGMA) Radio Station of the Year 1983

In 2001, with support from the US National Endowment for the Arts, WAMU launched BluegrassCountry.org, a 24-hour bluegrass/roots internet radio station, while continuing on-air music programming.

BluegrassCountry.org – Fast 50 award from Fast Company magazine, 2003

Also in 2004, the prominent Washington journalist Ellen Wadley Roper left WAMU a $250,000 bequest, the largest gift in the station's history.

When fellow public radio station WETA returned to an all-classical music format in 2007, WAMU became Washington, D.C.'s only full-time public news station, ending two years of competition between the stations for D.C.'s NPR news audience.

Bluegrass Country earned a National Association of Broadcasters award in 2009, recognizing its ability to create innovative and groundbreaking programming on its multicast channels.

Rehm, then 79, stated that she wanted a younger voice to take her place at WAMU. Also in 2015, Kojo Nnamdi lost the local public affairs program The Kojo Nnamdi Show's second hour of broadcasting, showing a trend for easier-to-access media for younger consumers.

But the audience for bluegrass was changing, as was the listener base at WAMU-FM. By 2016, the station was focusing on news, talk and public affairs programming, and announced that it would seek a buyer to take over Bluegrass Country.

WAMU relaunched DCist on June 11, 2018.