WLOA

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WLOA
City of license Farrell, Pennsylvania
Broadcast area Sharon, Pennsylvania, Hermitage, Pennsylvania, Youngstown, Ohio
Branding 1470 FAR
Frequency 1470 kHz
First air date October 3, 1954
(as WFAR)
Format Oldies (WGRP simulcast)
Power 1,000 watts (day)
500 watts (night)
Class B
Facility ID 47569
Callsign meaning Our Lady Of the Angels
(former Catholic format)
Former callsigns 1997-2003: WPAO
1996-1997: WICT
1991-1996: WRQQ
1989-1991: WOJY
1982-1989: WMGZ
1980-1982: WGBU
1954-1980: WFAR
Owner Vilkie Communications
(VCI Radio, Inc.)
Sister stations WGRP, WMVL
Webcast Listen Live
Website 940WGRP.com

WLOA (1470 AM) is a radio station licensed to Farrell, in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. It serves the areas of Sharon, Pennsylvania, and Youngstown, Ohio. Though licensed to Farrell, WLOA transmits from a facility on South State Line Road in Masury, Ohio. The Farrell city limit is across South State Line Road in Pennsylvania.

WLOA and WGRP 940 AM are owned by Vilkie Communications, which assumed control of the stations from Educational Media Foundation on December 15, 2011.[1]

WLOA, dubbed "1470 F-A-R" (a reference to its original WFAR callsign), and WGRP currently simulcast one another, but occasionally break away from one another for high school sports coverage. WLOA, WGRP and WMVL all simulcast The Backstage Pass on COOL show that is broadcast on Thursday nights.[2]

History

Beginnings as WFAR

The station first signed on the air as WFAR, a 500-watt daytime-only station, on October 3, 1954.[3][4] The station was founded by Sanford A. Schafitz, a native of the Youngstown area, doing business as Farrell-Sharon Broadcasting Company. Schafitz also started up WWIZ in Lorain, Ohio. He was involved in the launching of WXTV-TV in Youngstown in 1955.[5] Before WFAR went on the air, a dispute occurred between Greater New Castle Broadcasting Corporation and Schafitz. Greater New Castle Broadcasting Corporation wanted to put a 1,000-watt daytime-only station on 1460 kHz in New Castle, Pennsylvania, and Schafitz wanted to put a 500 W daytime only station on 1470 kHz. The FCC ruled in favor of Schafitz on September 4, 1953, and he put the station on the air shortly thereafter.[6][7]

WFAR applied for a power increase to 1,000 W on February 1, 1955. The FCC granted this on September 22, 1955.[8][9] An application to operate 24 hours a day, transmitting 1,000 W daytime and 500 W at night using a three-tower directional antenna system, was filed on April 10, 1957. WFAR also sought to change transmission locations to South State Line Road in Masury, Ohio, its current location.[10] The FCC granted the request on September 24, 1958,[11] and these operating parameters were implemented by 1961.[12]

WFAR's license was almost denied renewal in the wake of findings that Schafitz transferred station control of WWIZ in Lorain, Ohio, to the Lorain Journal Company without authorization from the FCC weeks before the station signed on,[13][14] which was further complicated by Harry Horvitz (the chief owner of Journal Publishing) and his attempt to buy the station outright in 1961.[15] The Lorain Journal was a party that actually tried to get the station assigned in the first place via a complicated straw-man transaction designed to circumvent the legal requirements which prevented Journal Publishing from holding a license.[16] (Prior to the 1948 establishment of the radio station WEOL in Elyria, Ohio, The Journal had a near monopoly on news gathering in the city of Lorain[17]).

Schafitz also owned WXTV-TV, a small independent television station based in Youngstown. Unlike the other TV stations in the market at the time, (WKBN-TV, WFMJ-TV and WYTV), WXTV had no network affiliation, transmitted at a lower power, and had a very limited broadcast day (usually starting as late as 6:00 p.m. on week nights).[18][19] WXTV was denied a license renewal, and a license to cover a construction permit to move to channel 45 because Schafitz failed to disclose that Guy W. Gully, who was 50% owner of WXTV, was indicted for a felony.

On March 25, 1964, the FCC issued the decision to deny the license renewals of WWIZ and WXTV and ordered them off the air by June 1. However, the FCC allowed the license for WFAR to be renewed.[20][21][22] WXTV's channel allocation was reassigned to Alliance as an educational frequency and was eventually occupied by WNEO. The license for WWIZ was appealed before the Supreme Court, and ultimately was revoked in late 1966. The station then operated under a temporary permit until being ordered off the air entirely on July 14, 1967,[23][24] with the frequency turned over to a local ownership group, who relaunched it in December 1969 as WLRO (and today known as WDLW).

In 1976, WFAR was joined by WFAR-FM, operating at 95.9, and signing on on December 28 of that year. Both stations shared the same call letters despite WFAR-FM's city of license as nearby Sharpsville, and having its own independent programming.

Schafitz died of heart failure on May 30, 1979, at the age of 53.[25] WFAR and its sister station, WFAR-FM, were sold to Broadcast Service Communications shortly thereafter for $603,750.[26]

First sale

WFAR was sold October 24, 1980, to Broadcast Service Communications, Inc., a company headed by Robert E. Kassi. [27] The station was immediately rechristened with the new call letters WGBU. The Top-40 and oldies format was dropped in favor of beautiful music, news and talk. The beautiful music was dropped by 1982; the news and talk format continued. [28] [29] WFAR-FM was rechristened as WGBZ, adopting a rock format and aspiring to serve Youngstown. The changes did little to make the stations prosper, and they were sold to National Communications System, Inc., a company headed by Jerome Bresson, on June 4, 1982, for $700,000. [30] [31]

Second sale

With National's acquisition, the call letters for both stations were changed. WGBU became WMGZ and WGBZ became WMGZ-FM. Both stations were an adult contemporary format, and they simulcasted one another full-time. [32] From then on, the station underwent a number of callsign changes — to WOJY in 1989; to WRQQ on March 18, 1991. The station became WICT on March 29, 1996, sharing a callsign with another new sister station, WICT-FM "95.1 The Cat" in Grove City (today known as WWGY), and changed again to WPAO on March 3, 1997. [33]

By 1997, WPAO and WICT were absorbed, along with New Castle stations WKST 1280-AM, WKST-FM 92.1-FM and WBZY 1200-AM, into the growing Jacor Communications cluster, which merged into Clear Channel Communications in May 1999. Along with Youngstown stations WRTK 1390-AM, WBBG 93.3-FM, WNIO 1540-AM, WNCD 106.1-FM, the aforementioned WTNX, WKBN 570-AM, WKBN 98.9-FM, and WBTJ 101.9-FM (operated with a LMA from owner Stop 26/Riverbend), ten radio stations in both markets were now controlled by the same owner.

WNIO and WRTK traded frequencies in October 1999, and Clear Channel sold both WRTK and WPAO to D&E Communications in April 2001, headed by Dale Edwards, the owner of the gospel station WABQ in Cleveland. Formats ranged from top 40 to oldies to easy listening music, with a number of religious formats along the way.

WPAO had a Christian format by 2002. In November that year, D&E Broadcasting sold the station to Holy Family Communications, headed by James N. Wright, for $350,000. [34] Holy Family Communications changed the call sign to WLOA on February 18, 2003,[33] (to complement Holy Family Communications' other Catholic radio stations) and took over operations on March 4, 2003, under the direction of Martha Coulter, station manager, making it the 60th Catholic radio station on the air in the United States.[citation needed]

WLOA's "Classic Country 1470/940" logo, used until September 2010

WLOA was purchased by Glunt's Beacon Broadcasting on July 7, 2005 (which also acquired WRTK from D&E, reuniting both stations once again).

WLOA became part of a three-station oldies format trimulcast (along with WGRP) that originated from Warren's WANR under the "Family Friendly Oldies" banner - but broke away to air assorted sports play-by-play. This lasted until December, 2006, when a sports format featuring Sporting News Radio was installed on WLOA and WGRP. In April 2008, WGRP briefly broke away from simulcasting WLOA, and began to broadcast classic country music with WLOA rejoining WGRP a few months later in September 2008.

The station included local broadcasters such as Tony Horn in the morning, Johnny Rogers in afternoons, with a short stint by local presenter Gregg Allen as "Porky" broadcasting Porky’s Pen at 10.

In January 2010, the Beacon Broadcasting owner and Warren steel supply magnate, Harold Glunt, died. Glunt's surviving son took over ownership of the stations, and he put all of Beacon Broadcasting's stations up for sale. Educational Media Foundation announced its intention to purchase WLOA, WGRP and WEXC for a combined $225,000 on September 10, 2010; all three stations changed formats to relay the national non-commercial K-LOVE feed. On February 3, 2011, EMF filed for Special Temporary Authority (STA) to remain silent, and was granted this authority on March 14, 2011. [35] WLOA was off-the-air from January 15, 2011, until the end of April.

EMF planned to sell both WLOA and WGRP to separate owners when they purchased WEXC, WLOA and WGRP from the estate of Harold Glunt of Beacon Broadcasting, intending to retain only WEXC (now WLVX). In June 2011, Vilkie Communications announced its intention to purchase WLOA and WGRP from EMF for $50,000. Vilkie Communications assumed control of both WLOA and WGRP on December 15, 2011.

WLOA transmitter site at 1620 South Stateline Road in Masury, Ohio
WLOA transmitter site Central main tower Central and west towers East tower
WLOA transmitter site at 1620 South Stateline Road in Masury, Ohio WLOA central main tower WLOA central and west towers WLOA east tower.

References

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  14. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  15. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  16. ↑ http://boards.radio-info.com/smf/index.php?topic=10536.msg98566#msg98566
  17. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  18. ↑ http://clevelandclassicmedia.blogspot.com/2007/11/wxtv-channel-45-valiant-effort.html
  19. ↑ http://clevelandclassicmedia.blogspot.com/2007/11/update-wxtv-channel-45-youngstown.html
  20. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  21. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  22. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  23. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  24. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  25. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  26. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  27. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  28. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  29. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  30. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  31. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  32. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  33. ↑ 33.0 33.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  34. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  35. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.

External links

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