WUNR 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 ...
serving the city of
Boston, Massachusetts, licensed to nearby
Brookline
Brookline may refer to:
Places in the United States
* Brookline, Massachusetts, a town near Boston
* Brookline, Missouri
* Brookline, New Hampshire
* Brookline (Pittsburgh), a neighborhood in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
* Brookline, Vermont
See ...
. It broadcasts on 1600
kHz
The hertz (symbol: Hz) is the unit of frequency in the International System of Units (SI), equivalent to one event (or cycle) per second. The hertz is an SI derived unit whose expression in terms of SI base units is s−1, meaning that on ...
on the
AM radio dial with an
ethnic
An ethnic group or an ethnicity is a grouping of people who identify with each other on the basis of shared attributes that distinguish them from other groups. Those attributes can include common sets of traditions, ancestry, language, history, ...
format. It is owned by Herbert Hoffman.
History
The station first signed on in 1948 as WVOM, a local station. WVOM was one of the earliest stations in the Boston area to adopt 24-hour broadcasting on a regular basis. The station was sold to Herbert Hoffman in 1955, who changed the call letters to WBOS and eventually added an FM station,
WBOS-FM.
The AM station had some leased-time ethnic programming, but also for a time in the mid 1950s was home to one of the first rock-and-roll shows on Boston radio, hosted by a young
Arnie "Woo-Woo" Ginsburg. In the late 1950s, WBOS was mostly 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 ...
simulcast on both AM and FM, although some ethnic programming remained on the AM side.
In the late 1960s, WBOS gradually abandoned simulcasting with WBOS-FM and increased the amount of ethnic programming on the AM side. The call letters of the AM station became WUNR in 1969 to reflect its ethnic format.
WUNR's transmitter and antenna are located in nearby
Newton, Massachusetts
Newton is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. It is approximately west of downtown Boston. Newton resembles a patchwork of thirteen villages, without a city center. According to the 2020 U.S. Census, the population of Ne ...
. A few years back, the transmitter site was rebuilt, which resulted in a more powerful (20,000 watts) signal for the station in most of the Boston area, but still heavily "nulled" to the southwest to protect
WWRL
WWRL (1600 AM) is a commercial radio station licensed to New York City. WWRL airs an all-news radio format as an affiliate of the Black Information Network (BIN). The station is owned by iHeartMedia, Inc.
By day, WWRL broadcasts at 25,000 wat ...
in New York City.
References
*
External links
UNR
Radio stations established in 1948
Brookline, Massachusetts
Mass media in Norfolk County, Massachusetts
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