 | |
| |
|---|---|
| Broadcast area | Berkshire Mountains |
| Frequency | 1420kHz |
| Branding | AM 1420 WBEC |
| Programming | |
| Format | Talk andsports radio |
| Affiliations | |
| Ownership | |
| Owner |
|
| History | |
First air date | March 1947; 78 years ago (1947-03) |
Call sign meaning | Berkshire Eagle Company (original owner) |
| Technical information[1] | |
Licensing authority | FCC |
| Facility ID | 2714 |
| Class | B |
| Power | 1,000 watts |
Transmitter coordinates | 42°26′40.3″N73°16′41.38″W / 42.444528°N 73.2781611°W /42.444528; -73.2781611 (WBEC) |
| Repeater | 95.9WBEC-HD3 (Pittsfield) |
| Links | |
Public license information | |
| Website | 1420wbec |
WBEC (1420kHz) is acommercialAM radio station broadcasting atalk andsportsradio format. It islicensed toPittsfield, Massachusetts, and is owned byTownsquare Media.[2]
WBEC is powered at 1,000 watts. By day, it uses anon-directional antenna. At night, to protect other stations on1420 AM, it uses adirectional antenna with a two-tower array.[3]
Most of WBEC's schedule is made up ofnationally syndicated shows. Weekdays begin with two news magazines,First Light with Michael Toscano andThis Morning, America's First News with Gordon Deal. Afternoons featureprogressive talk hostThom Hartmann and family finance expertDave Ramsey.Fox Sports Radio is heard evenings and overnights.
Weekends include shows on money, health, home repair and gardening, as well as repeats of weekday shows and Fox Sports. Most talk hours begin with world and national news fromABC News Radio.
In March 1947, WBEC firstsigned on the air.[4] It was owned byThe Berkshire Eagle daily newspaper, which is reflected in the station'scall sign, Berkshire Eagle Company. It was anaffiliate of theNBC Blue Network, which later becameABC Radio. The station added an FM counterpart in 1948,WBEC-FM at 94.3MHz, but gave up the license when few people had FM receivers. In 1967, WBEC-FM returned at 105.5MHz. In the 1960s, WBEC-AM-FMsimulcast aTop 40 music format, along with news and sports.
WBEC-AM-FM were sold to Richard S. Jackson, who held on to them until the early 1980s, when he sold them to Bob Howard Communications. Howard, according to iBerkshires.com, was a formerNBC TV President, “who kept the stations until they were sold in bankruptcy.”[5] The new owner was Joe Gallagher Associates. Gallagher later sold WBEC-AM-FM to Telemedia Corporation, whose parent company was sold to Vox Media in August 1999.
WBEC has a rich history of broadcasting in Berkshire County, which has included, at various times,top 40 music (currently the format on WBEC-FM), local news, sports, and original programs such asSound Off 1420, a morning talk show that was popular in the 1970s and early 1980s. Early adopters of the Marti ElectronicsRemote Pickup Unit (RPU), WBEC had the ability to offer live local high school sports and remote broadcasts during special events.
Well known on-air personalities who have been on WBEC's airwaves include Bob Cudmore, Bill Watson, Rick Bletaire and Larry Kratka.[6] In the 1990s, as music listening switched to FM radio, WBEC eliminated its music programming and went with anall-talk format.
On March 5, 2012, WBEC announced it would no longer carryThe Rush Limbaugh Show in response to Limbaugh'sderogatory remarks about law studentSandra Fluke. General manager Peter Barry told localNPR member stationWFCR that he and his staff had been troubled by Limbaugh's rhetoric for many years, but his attacks on Fluke were the last straw. WBEC is believed to be the second of Limbaugh's affiliates to cancel his show;KPUA inHilo, Hawaii, had dropped Limbaugh a few hours earlier.[7] WBEC replaced Limbaugh withTheMike Huckabee Show upon that show's launch on April 9 of the same year. The station began to runThe Howie Carr Show on January 5, 2015.
In August 2013, Gamma Broadcasting reached a deal to sell its Berkshire County radio stations, including WBEC, to Reed Miami Holdings.[8] But the sale was canceled on December 30, 2013.[9] In October 2016, Gamma agreed to sell its stations toGalaxy Communications.[10] That sale also fell through, and in 2017 the stations were acquired by Townsquare Media.[11]