Wendy Bell headed back to radio on WJAS Pittsburgh

Wendy Bell, the radio host let go by KDKA last fall, is joining WJAS Pittsburgh. She announced her new position in a Facebook post Wednesday.

“America needs common-sense conservatism,” she wrote.

JD Turco, senior vice president at St. Barnabas Broadcasting, which bought WJAS in November, confirmed Thursday that Bell will be joining the station.

“She’s going to be a conservative talk show host, in keeping with the lineup we have right now,” he said. “There’s a lot of conservative talk there. We believe she fits well into that lineup.”

The station features conservative voices that include Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity.

Bell’s new radio show will air Monday through Thursday from 11 a.m. till noon and Friday from 9 a.m. to noon on WJAS 1320AM and 99.1 FM and the iHeartRadio app, beginning Jan. 25.

KDKA removed Bell from the air in September and officially “parted ways” with her in October after some of her incendiary comments attracted attention on social media and went viral. In late August, an anonymous Twitter account published a clip from her June 26 KDKA show, in which Bell suggested park rangers “shoot on sight” people who deface public monuments. “My easy solution for the park rangers and hopefully snipers who are going to be watching for this is to shoot on sight.” Bell then imitated the sound of a gunshot. “Shoot! Done! No more messing with monuments. You want to mess with a monument? Done! Get out!”

The Twitter account also posted a video snippet of Bell delivering a message to protesters, saying that “the silent majority is pissed and they are armed and they are ready. So, don’t muck with us.”

She continued hosting a radio show via Facebook and on her website after leaving KDKA.

Bell was fired from WTAE in 2016, where she served as a longtime news anchor, over a Facebook post she wrote on her official work account in the aftermath of a mass shooting in Wilkinsburg.

The post expressed outrage and sorrow over the attack, but went on to say that she imagined the shooters to be young Black men with prior arrests who “have multiple siblings from multiple fathers and their mothers work multiple jobs,” and continued by expressing “hope” because she saw a hardworking young Black man at a restaurant. The post was widely criticized for being patronizing and simplistic about complex matters of race, while her defenders saw her as earnest.

Turco acknowledged that Bell is a controversial figure, but said he was optimistic that she’d fit in with the WJAS station.

“We absolutely have high hopes,” he said.