| Simulcast ofWSYR,Syracuse | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Broadcast area | Syracuse metropolitan area |
| Frequency | 106.9MHz (HD Radio) |
| Branding | Newsradio 570 WSYR |
| Programming | |
| Format | News/talk |
| Subchannels |
|
| Affiliations | |
| Ownership | |
| Owner |
|
| WBBS,WHEN,WSYR,WWHT,WYYY | |
| History | |
First air date | July 19, 1946; 78 years ago (1946-07-19)[1] |
Former call signs |
|
Call sign meaning | Syracuse |
| Technical information[2] | |
Licensing authority | FCC |
| Facility ID | 25018 |
| Class | B1 |
| ERP | 9,000watts |
| HAAT | 124 meters (407 ft) |
| Translator(s) | 101.3 W267AL (Syracuse; relays HD3) |
| Links | |
Public license information | |
| Webcast | Listen Live |
| Website | wsyr.iheart.com/ |
WSYR-FM (106.9MHz) is acommercialradio stationlicensed toSolvay, New York, and serving theSyracuse metropolitan area andCentral New York. Owned and operated byiHeartMedia, it broadcasts atalk radioformat,simulcast withWSYR570 AM since January 2011. Thestudios and offices are on Plum Street in Syracuse.
WSYR-FM has aneffective radiated power (ERP) of 9,000watts. Thetransmitter is off West Seneca Turnpike, on the campus ofOnondaga Community College in Syracuse.[3] WSYR-FM broadcasts usingHD Radio technology. One of itsdigital subchannels simulcasts theurban adult contemporary programming of co-ownedWHEN620 AM. Another subchannel carriesChristian worship music from the "Air1" network.
Weekday mornings begin with a local news and interview show with Dave Allen. Afternoons are hosted byBob Lonsberry, who broadcasts his show from the studios ofsister stationWHAM inRochester.[4] The rest of the weekday schedule comes fromnationally syndicated talk shows, mostly fromiHeartMediasubsidiary,Premiere Networks:The Sean Hannity Show,The Glenn Beck Program,The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show, andCoast to Coast AM withGeorge Noory.[5] One program fromWestwood One is heard weeknights,The Mark Levin Show.
The weekend schedule includes shows on money, cars, home repair and pets, some of which are paidbrokered programming. Syndicated shows heard on weekends includeThe Tech GuyLeo Laporte,At Home withGary Sullivan,Handel on The Law withBill Handel,The Weekend with Michael Brown,The Cat's Roundtable with John Catsimatidis andSunday Night Live withBill Cunningham. Most hours begin with world and national news fromFox News Radio.
The original WSYR-FM began operating on July 19, 1946, and thecall sign was originally found on 94.5 MHz.[1] That station originally simulcast 570 WSYR. In the 1970s, WSYR-FM carried a largelyautomatedsoft rock format. In the 1980s, it switched toadult contemporary music with liveDJs. To give it a separate identity from its AM sister station, the FM station switched its call letters toWYYY, calling itself "Y94".
The current WSYR-FM had been licensed for most of its time on air to the city ofAuburn, New York. Itsigned on the air on May 20, 1949, as WMBO-FM.[6] It became WRLX on February 13, 1970.[7] The station was notautomated as mostbeautiful music stations of that era. It used turntables and tape cartridge machines, providing a mostly instrumental format, with one slogan being "Relax with WRLX". (TheWRLX call sign is now used by a station inRiviera Beach, Florida, also owned by iHeartMedia.)
In 1981, the station changed its call sign and re-branded as WPCX "Pix 106" and featured Bob Paris in the morning. Paris had been the morning drive personality for WSEN-FM in the 1970s when it featured a country music format. In 1997, the station flipped tosmooth jazz as WHCD. By 2000, it switched tourban contemporary. After three years, it evolved into anurban adult contemporary direction, focusing on targeting theAfrican-American community. For the first three years as urban AC, there was no competitor untilWOLF-FM flipped to theMOViN format.
On August 28, 2009, at 5 pm, Power 106.9 dropped the Urban AC format forcountry music, branding itself as "Young Country 106.9". This was despite the fact that station owner Clear Channel Communications already had a country music outlet in the Syracuse area, the market leader 104.7WBBS inFulton, a more mainstream country station. The move was ostensibly an effort to hedge its bets against competition fromWOLF-FM inDeRuyter, which Clear Channel sold in March 2009 and changed to country music at the same time as WPHR did. As it turned out, the country format on WPHR was a weekend-longstunt. The station switched back to its regular format that Monday morning (August 31).[8] The station, after the stunt, moved to its current location in Solvay, which gives it greater coverage over the city of Syracuse but far less over the Finger Lakes. Coverage was very large in the Central New York area down into Pennsylvania and up into Canada in the 1970s when the station was WRLX. It also ran asubcarrier music program similar to the old styleMuzak of those days.
In December 2010, five domains suggesting that 106.9 would be changing to a simulcast ofWSYR were registered and parked atGoDaddy. Later discovered, none of those domains were registered/owned by the station or used. WSYR was already simulcasting on WPHR'sHD Radiodigital subchannel.[9][10] Concurrently with the discovery,WHEN adopted an identical format and branding as "Power 620". The "Power 106.9" website was rebranded as "Power620.com" at the same time. As of December 27, Clear Channel had filed to swap call signs with WSYR-FM inGifford, Florida.[11] The format change took effect Sunday evening, January 2, 2011.
For a time, the FM side gained priority in on-air advertising and on the web site banner. At the outset, the simulcast was branded "Newsradio 106.9 WSYR".[12] However, the AM side remained the primary station, and over the next two years most references to the FM side were cut back, to the extent that the station now refers to itself as "Newsradio 570 WSYR, now on 106.9 FM".
43°00′11″N76°11′56″W / 43.003°N 76.199°W /43.003; -76.199