WLAT (910
AM; "La Mega") is a
radio station
Radio broadcasting is transmission of audio (sound), sometimes with related metadata, by radio waves to radio receivers belonging to a public audience. In terrestrial radio broadcasting the radio waves are broadcast by a land-based radio ...
licensed to
New Britain, Connecticut
New Britain is a city in Hartford County, Connecticut, United States. It is located approximately southwest of Hartford. According to 2020 Census, the population of the city is 74,135.
Among the southernmost of the communities encompassed wit ...
and serves the
Hartford market. WLAT currently airs a Spanish pop music format. Owned by Gois Broadcasting, WLAT broadcasts from studios located on Burnside Avenue in East Hartford, while its transmitter array is located behind the
Connecticut School of Broadcasting
The Connecticut School of Broadcasting was founded in 1964 by Dick Robinson as a small, private school in Connecticut. Known now as the CSB Media Arts Center, it is the largest group of Digital Media Arts Schools (Broadcast Media School, Code Scho ...
on Birdseye Road in
Farmington
Farmington may refer to:
Places Canada
*Farmington, British Columbia
*Farmington, Nova Scotia (disambiguation)
United States
* Farmington, Arkansas
*Farmington, California
* Farmington, Connecticut
*Farmington, Delaware
* Farmington, Georgia
...
(also known as "Radio Park"). The station also operates translator W269DE (101.7
FM) in New Britain.
History
This station originally came on the air May 20, 1949,
as WHAY with studios in New Britain, and the transmitter at the present location on Birdseye Road in Farmington. The call letters were changed in February 1965 to WRCH,
and a few years later, the station adopted a
beautiful music
Beautiful music (sometimes abbreviated as BM, B/EZ or BM/EZ for "beautiful music/easy listening") is a mostly instrumental music format that was prominent in North American radio from the late 1950s through the 1980s. Easy listening, elevator musi ...
format. In 1967, new studios were constructed at the tower site on Birdseye Road. They called the facility "Radio Park". The call letters were changed to WRCQ ("91 Q") on October 23, 1974.
After
American Radio Systems purchased the station in the late-1980s, the format was changed to rebroadcasting
CNN Headline News
HLN is an American basic cable network. Owned by Warner Bros. Discovery, the network primarily carries true crime programming.
The channel was originally launched on January 1, 1982 by Turner Broadcasting as CNN2 (later renamed Headline News ...
; the station became WNEZ on January 5, 1990.
On March 26, 1997, the station flipped to
urban contemporary
Urban contemporary music, also known as urban music, hip hop, urban pop, or just simply urban, is a music radio format. The term was coined by New York radio DJ Frankie Crocker in the early to mid-1970s as a synonym for Black music. Urban contem ...
as "Jamz 910 AM."
[http://www.americanradiohistory.com/Archive-RandR/1990s/1997/RR-1997-03-28.pdf ] In 2001, Spanish broadcaster Mega Broadcasting's
Alfredo Alonso
Alfredo Alonso is a retired Cuba-born media executive. He held senior management positions in Spanish-language media publishing, radio broadcasting, television production, corporate event management and restaurateur. He is known as an innovator of ...
purchased the station for $750,000, and changed the format to Spanish as "Amor 910" on May 5 of that year. At that time, studios were off
Route 6 in Farmington. Mega later moved the studios to 330 Main Street in Hartford. On May 25, 2001, Mega swapped the call letters with their other Hartford area station (
1230 AM
The following radio stations broadcast on AM frequency 1230 kHz: 1230 AM is a regional ( Class B) frequency outside the coterminous United States (Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands) and a local ( Class C) broadcast freq ...
), with 910 becoming WLAT.
The station was purchased by Freedom Communications in 2002. Gois purchased the station in 2008.
The WLAT call letters were originally assigned to
Conway, South Carolina
Conway is a city in Horry County, South Carolina, United States. The population was 24,849 at the 2020 census, up from 17,103 in 2010 census. It is the county seat of Horry County and is part of the Myrtle Beach metropolitan area. It is the home ...
, in the 1940s. The station was on the frequency of 1330 kHz operating at the power of 5 kW daytime and .5 kW nihttime. That station is now
WPJS
WPJS (1330 AM) is an Urban Gospel formatted radio station licensed to serve Conway, South Carolina, which targets a primarily African-American audience and also airs community-oriented programming.
History
WLAT was the first radio station in Hor ...
.
Translator
References
External links
*
*
New Britain, Connecticut
Mass media in Hartford County, Connecticut
LAT
Radio stations established in 1949
LAT
1949 establishments in Connecticut
Tropical music radio stations
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