WLYN
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

WLYN is a brokered time
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, ...
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 radi ...
in the
Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...
market. The station is licensed to
Lynn, Massachusetts Lynn is the eighth-largest municipality in Massachusetts and the largest city in Essex County. Situated on the Atlantic Ocean, north of the Boston city line at Suffolk Downs, Lynn is part of Greater Boston's urban inner core. Settled by E ...
, and is owned by Multicultural Broadcasting. Its programming is broadcast on 1360 kHz on the AM band. WLYN had broadcast in AM Stereo until the end of 2006. WLYN first signed on the air on December 11, 1947 as a daytime-only station. It operated at 500 watts, and the
transmitter In electronics and telecommunications, a radio transmitter or just transmitter is an electronic device which produces radio waves with an antenna. The transmitter itself generates a radio frequency alternating current, which is applied to the ...
was located near the Fox Hill Bridge ("Lynn's New Radio" 15). The opening was covered by the city's two local newspapers, the '' Lynn Daily Evening Item'' and the ''Lynn Telegram-News''. The new station's president was A. (Avigdor) M. "Vic" Morgan, a veteran broadcaster who had been involved with mechanical television in TV's formative years; he had been the general manager of the Shortwave & Television Company in Boston in the early 1930

Among the air-staff were greater Boston radio veterans like Ned French and Raymond Knight. In charge of women's programming as well as public affairs and educational programs was Dorothy Rich; Mrs. Rich was also the radio director at Endicott College, Endicott Junior College in Beverly, Massachusetts ("Station WLYN," 21). The station was sold on March 3, 1950 to Brookline, Massachusetts businessman Theodore "Ted" Feinstein. (Feinstein also would own other smaller market stations, including
WNBP WNBP (1450 kHz) is a commercial AM radio station licensed to Newburyport, Massachusetts, United States, and serving the Greater Boston radio market. The station is owned by Bloomberg L.P. and serves as a simulcast of Bloomberg-programmed WRCA ...
in Newburyport and WTSA in Brattleboro, Vermont.) For many years, WLYN served the North Shore with local programming, local news, local high school sports, and talk shows that focused on local issues. WLYN played mainly popular music, and in the 1950s and 1960s, it continued to employ well-known announcers who had worked at other greater Boston area stations. They included John "Jack" Chadderton, Hank Forbes, Chris Clausen, talk host Morgan Baker (formerly of WEEI in Boston) and Johnny Towne. Later, WLYN switched to nostalgia and
big-band A big band or jazz orchestra is a type of musical ensemble of jazz music that usually consists of ten or more musicians with four sections: saxophones, trumpets, trombones, and a rhythm section. Big bands originated during the early 1910s and ...
music, hiring well-known veteran broadcasters like Bill Marlowe (Buchanan, 1974, 8). For a brief period of time in the mid-1970s, the station also experimented with
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, ...
, but this was unsuccessful (McLaughlin, A6). In 1948, WLYN's president A.M. Morgan also put an FM station on the air; WLYN-FM used the 101.7 frequency (Broadcasting Yearbook, 161). For many years, it simulcast WLYN during the day and had its own programming after the AM signed off at sunset. In the early 1970s, responding to an influx of Spanish-speaking immigrants, both WLYN and WLYN-FM began offering an hour of programming in Spanish each Sunday. By the mid-1970s, WLYN-FM had begun broadcasting Greek and Italian ethnic programming in the midday and late evening hours, with drive times still simulcast with the AM. In 1981, WLYN-FM began broadcasting a nighttime block of " new wave" rock music which eventually became a 24/7
modern rock Modern rock is an umbrella term used to describe rock music that is found on college rock radio stations. Some radio stations use this term to distinguish themselves from classic rock, which is based in 1960s–1980s rock music. Radio format Mod ...
format in 1982 when the midday ethnic programs were moved to the AM side. In February 1983, WLYN-FM was sold to Stephen Mindich, owner of the Boston ''Phoenix'', and in early April it was on the air under new call letters— WFNX; the new station retained for the most part the modern-rock format that had been launched by the previous owners, and subsequently expanded upon it. (101.7 is now WBWL.) Since the early 1980s, WLYN has continued to broadcast ethnic programming, and now broadcasts 24 hours a day, with reduced nighttime power.


References

*Broadcasting Yearbook, 1952 edition, p. 161. *Buchanan, William. "Music Spells Food of Love and Life When WLYN's Bill Marlowe is on the Air." Boston Globe, February 3, 1974, p. 8. *Buchanan, William. "Remember When Disc Jockeys Were Celebrities?" Boston Globe, June 2, 1972, p. 35. *"Lynn's New Radio Outlet Welcomed to Air Today." Lynn (MA) Daily Evening Item, December 11, 1947, p. 15. *McLaughlin, Jeff. "Welcome Back Country." Boston Globe, September 13, 1979, p. A6. *McLean, Robert. "Takeover in the Night." Boston Globe, January 24, 1979, p. 31. *"Station WLYN Goes On the Air for First Time." Lynn (MA) Telegram-News, December 11, 1947, p. 21.


External links

{{Multicultural Broadcasting LYN Radio stations established in 1947 Lynn, Massachusetts Mass media in Essex County, Massachusetts 1947 establishments in Massachusetts Multicultural Broadcasting stations