WNCK (89.5 FM) is

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 ...

known as "89.5 Quahog Country". It is licensed to and serves

Nantucket, Massachusetts Nantucket () is an island about south from Cape Cod. Together with the small islands of Tuckernuck and Muskeget, it constitutes the Town and County of Nantucket, a combined county/town government that is part of the U.S. state of Massachuse ...

. The station is owned by Nantucket Public Radio, Inc. The station signed on in 2002 and originally programmed an

adult contemporary Adult contemporary music (AC) is a form of radio-played popular music, ranging from 1960s vocal and 1970s soft rock music to predominantly ballad-heavy music of the present day, with varying degrees of easy listening, pop, soul, R&B, quie ...

format. On April 1, 2003, the station entered into a ten-year programming and operational agreement with the

WGBH Educational Foundation The WGBH Educational Foundation (also known as GBH since August 2020) is an American public broadcasting group based in Boston, Massachusetts. Established in 1951, it holds the licenses to all of the PBS member stations in Massachusetts, and ...

; despite this, WNCK remained separately-run from WCAI, WNAN, and WZAI, the WGBH-owned and operated Cape and Islands NPR stations. Originally, WGBH programmed WNCK as a simulcast of its primary radio service, offering a mixed-format of classical,

jazz Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major ...

folk Folk or Folks may refer to: Sociology *Nation *People * Folklore ** Folk art ** Folk dance ** Folk hero ** Folk music *** Folk metal *** Folk punk *** Folk rock ** Folk religion * Folk taxonomy Arts, entertainment, and media * Folk Plus or Fol ...

blues Blues is a music genre and musical form which originated in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the Afr ...

Celtic music Celtic music is a broad grouping of music genres that evolved out of the folk music traditions of the Celtic people of Northwestern Europe. It refers to both orally-transmitted traditional music and recorded music and the styles vary considerab ...

, and

news News is information about current events. This may be provided through many different Media (communication), media: word of mouth, printing, Mail, postal systems, broadcasting, Telecommunications, electronic communication, or through the tes ...

. Upon the completion of WGBH's acquisition of Boston classical music station

WCRB WCRB (99.5 FM) is a non-commercial radio station licensed to Lowell, Massachusetts, which serves the Greater Boston area. It broadcasts classical music. Its studios are located in Brighton, and its transmitter is located west of Andover. WCRB wa ...

on December 1, 2009, WNCK switched its programming source to that station in an effort to improve WCRB's signal. (Concurrent with the acquisition, WGBH's own classical music programming, as well as the folk and blues programming, were replaced with increased news programming, essentially rendering the simulcast on WNCK largely redundant to WCAI, specifically the WNAN transmitter.) On June 19, 2014, WNCK dropped its simulcast with WCRB and added the NPR programs ''Morning Edition'' and ''All Things Considered'' while airing classical music the rest of the day and all weekend.WNCK Shifts to Public News/Talk
/ref> On December 28, 2020, the station changed its format to

country music Country (also called country and western) is a genre of popular music that originated in the Southern and Southwestern United States in the early 1920s. It primarily derives from blues, church music such as Southern gospel and spirituals, ...

, branded as "89.5 Quahog Country".

References

External links

NCK NPR member stations Public Radio International stations Country radio stations in the United States Nantucket, Massachusetts WGBH Educational Foundation Radio stations established in 2002 2002 establishments in Massachusetts {{Massachusetts-radio-station-stub