WPLY (AM)

WPLY is a Sports Radio formatted broadcast radio station licensed to Roanoke, Virginia, serving Southwest Virginia the New River Valley. WPLY is owned and operated by Mel Wheeler, Inc.

History

WPLY launched with the callsign WSLS just before noon on October 1, 1940. For over 50 years, the station would carry a Country format. At one time, the now defunct Roy H. Park Broadcasting had owned WSLS-AM-FM-TV, but sold the radio stations because Park also owned a newspaper in Roanoke. After the purchase, the AM became WSLC at midnight on August 1, 1972, but stayed Country, and the FM became Rock WSLQ). Only the TV station still carries the original WSLS letters. At noon on May 25, 2000, the station began simulcasting it new sister station, the former easy listening turned classic rock station WPVR, which was flipped to Country as WSLC-FM, after being purchased by Mel Wheeler Inc. This continued until March 13, 2002, when WSLC was flipped to new calls as WVBE, simulcasting co-owned WVBE-FM Lynchburg, and brought R&B music full time to Roanoke.

WPLY

WPLY may refer to:

WPLY (defunct)

WPLY (960 AM) was a radio station licensed to serve Mount Pocono, Pennsylvania, USA. The station was owned by Nassau Broadcasting Partners.

WPLY broadcast a news/talk radio format. The station simulcast with WVPO (840 AM) in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania.

The station was assigned the WPLY call letters by the Federal Communications Commission on March 10, 2005.

WPLY originally signed on in April 1981 as WPCN. The locally-owned community radio station was notably innovative at the time for installing serial #1 of the Continental Model 314R1 PWM transmitter, which ushered in an era of enhanced audio fidelity and efficient, power-saving operation (since replaced with a Harris Gates One). The four towers, employing elevated feeds, are guyed with non-conductive Phillystran cable, also very innovative at the time.

In January 2012, the Federal Communications Commission issued a notice of apparent liability and proposed a $17,000 fine against Nassau Broadcasting II, stating WPLY "willfully and repeatedly violated" FCC regulations. The investigation leading to the notice stemmed from a random inspection conducted at the WPLY facilities in March 2010, during which it was discovered that the station had been transmitting from only one of its four antennas at greatly reduced power (250 watts) without receiving authorization and had been doing so since Nassau purchased the station in 2000. FCC regulations require that stations unable to operate at full power must apply for a temporary authorization to operate at reduced power, which WPLY did only after the 2010 inspection, claiming that the station's antenna array was "severely deteriorated" and in need of extensive repairs.

WRNB

WRNB is an urban oldies station broadcasting at 100.3 FM. Licensed to Media, Pennsylvania, it serves the Philadelphia market and is owned by Radio One. It has studios located in Bala Cynwyd and broadcasts from a transmitter site in Philadelphia's Roxborough section. The station is severely short-spaced due to co-channel interference from WHTZ in New York City and WBIG-FM in Washington, D.C. (a similar situation occurs with WBEB (101.1 FM) being short-spaced with WCBS-FM and WWDC).

100.3 FM history

100.3 FM first went on the air in the 1940s as KYW-FM, and was changed to WXUR-FM in the 1960s, and simulcasting its sister station, WXUR 690. The station was owned by Carl McIntire, a Bible Presbyterian minister; it ran a religious format. In 1973, the FCC revoked the station's license for violating the Fairness Doctrine, refusing to air competing viewpoints. The frequency then went dark. The WXUR call letters are now used by a classic rock station in Herkimer, New York.

WKSZ as Kiss 100

In 1981, after a seven-year comparative hearing, the FCC award the license to Greater Media, owned by Daniel Lerner. The name referred to the city of license and was not associated with the company Greater Media that owns WMGK and other stations. On November 8, 1982, 100.3 signed on again as WKSZ, "Kiss 100", with an adult contemporary (AC) format. By 1987, Kiss 100 was the number 1 Arbitron-ranked station among women ages 25 to 54. In the early 1990s, however, the battle for AC listeners heated up, and Kiss lost ground in the ratings, falling to 17th place in 1992 behind three other AC stations. They tried to mix AC and oldies with what they called the "50/50 mix", but it didn't work, and in 1993, returned to just a contemporary mix of love songs.