• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

Relevant Radio -- Salem

Relevant Radio (Immaculate Heart Media), the Catholic broadcaster, today announced it is acquiring 9 stations and 4 FM translators--including one in Boston--from Salem. This is in addition to stations they bought from Salem earlier this year.

http://relevantradio.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Relevant-Radio-Station-Acquisition.pdf

The release doesn't give many specifics.

Any idea what they're picking up in Boston? They already operate WSJW AM550 in Pawtucket/Providence.
 
950 WROL has an FM translator at 100.3...Salem also owns WEZE 590 and WWDJ 1150. 1260 was sold off earlier.

A Catholic group owns 1060 here...that isn't Relevant Radio? WQOM as in Queen Of
Martyrs
 
No, WQOM is "Holy Family Communications," a separate network from Relevant Radio-Immaculate Heart Media.

590 is mostly Christian-Evangelical programming, I believe. Would be interesting if that's the one that'll "convert" to Catholicism!

Since the Relevant-Immaculate merger a while ago Relevant has been expanding dramatically all around the country.

They must believe that Boston can support 2 Catholic stations.
 
OK thanks--They hadn't updated the affiliate list on the Relevant site yet, of course.Maybe it can support 2 Catholic stations.

On cable there is, or was, Boston Catholic TV which shared time with EternalWord Television Network.
-----
"You won't find sports on EWTN.But you will find the Cardinals and the Padres."--old EWTN promo
 
Via RadioInsight the Boston station Catholic broadcaster Relevant Radio is buying is WWDJ AM 1150.Currently the station, known for years as WCOP, is Spanish Christian.
 
Last edited:
590 is mostly Christian-Evangelical programming, I believe. Would be interesting if that's the one that'll "convert" to Catholicism!
I very highly doubt that they will either sell or flip the station. It' is both their flagship in Boston, and their baby as well! This is the very first radio station that Salem Broadcasting has ever owned!
 
If you abbreviated the name of the owner it could be I-Heart Media :)
Ah, but no.Yes regarding 590--Salem would keep.Radio Insight did say it was 1150.
 
I wonder if the sale includes the tower site?

WAZN is diplexed on the Salem towers in Lexington... and the real estate is worth more than both MRBI's WAZN and Salem's 1150 combined
 
I think they owned N. Carolina and California first.

The closing on 590 in Boston was February, 1997. The earliest acquisition of those stations they currently own was KFAX in San Francisco, dating back to 1984.

It appears that KKLA in Los Angeles became another early station in 1985.

The original station appears to be KDAR in Oxnard, put on the air by Salem found Ed Atsinger in 1974 and then made part of the formation of Salem around 1984-85.
 
I wonder if the sale includes the tower site?

WAZN is diplexed on the Salem towers in Lexington... and the real estate is worth more than both MRBI's WAZN and Salem's 1150 combined

Salem, if the owner of the land (it might be owned by a vertical real estate company), would likely include a nice lease-back by the new owner which would likely be more than the station is currently making. A win-win for them
 


The closing on 590 in Boston was February, 1997. The earliest acquisition of those stations they currently own was KFAX in San Francisco, dating back to 1984.


But just like many stations on the dial, they were on 1260AM for at least a couple of decades before. Be the first station or not, it was still only one of three stations that was around since Salem Broadcastings humble beginnings.
 
But just like many stations on the dial, they were on 1260AM for at least a couple of decades before. Be the first station or not, it was still only one of three stations that was around since Salem Broadcastings humble beginnings.

But it was bought well after the original Atsinger station in Oxnard, CA. A lot of the older stations were sold.
 
https://radio-locator.com/cgi-bin/finder?call=Wwdj&x=15&y=10&sr=Y&s=C

Links on that page will show you the approx. daytime and nighttime range of 1150.For years it was WCOP which eventually ran pop music, middle of the road, then country (9 years) and had various calls and formats from 1977 to 2008.It doesn't exactly reach all the Boston suburbs that people eventually moved to over the years. I was driving around yesterday north of Boston, around Reading and it was a bit weak.

At 4 pm I figured I'd catch the top of the hour ID from AM 1230 WESX, formerly licensed to Salem but now the COL is Nahant, pop. just under 4000--the 1 sq mile peninsula where I grew up.The calls were pronounced in Spanish so the ID
was "dubla-vay-eh-ese-equis Neh-hunt"
or something like that.
 


The closing on 590 in Boston was February, 1997.

I believe that's when they closed/moved on 590AM.

WEZE in Boston owned by Salem (or it's early incarnates) had a long life on 1260AM before that.

In September 1977, WEZE was sold to New England Continental Media, owned by Stuart Epperson. NECM was an ancestor to today's Salem Communications group, and under its ownership WEZE became a religious station.
 
https://radio-locator.com/cgi-bin/finder?call=Wwdj&x=15&y=10&sr=Y&s=C

Links on that page will show you the approx. daytime and nighttime range of 1150.For years it was WCOP which eventually ran pop music, middle of the road, then country (9 years) and had various calls and formats from 1977 to 2008.It doesn't exactly reach all the Boston suburbs that people eventually moved to over the years. I was driving around yesterday north of Boston, around Reading and it was a bit weak.

At 4 pm I figured I'd catch the top of the hour ID from AM 1230 WESX, formerly licensed to Salem but now the COL is Nahant, pop. just under 4000--the 1 sq mile peninsula where I grew up.The calls were pronounced in Spanish so the ID
was "dubla-vay-eh-ese-equis Neh-hunt"
or something like that.


Vague memory that in the mid-60s when 680 switched from all-talk WNAC to Top 40 WRKO, several of the old 680 talkers went to WCOP for a while, others went to WEEI 590.
 
How about downtown Boston! ;-)

I recall driving around Post Office Square and near the Waterfront listening to 1150AM after dark and hearing, some station battling it out in the background!!

Even though the directional pattern is aimed toward Boston, it's still only 5kW from ten miles away, and it doesn't penetrate the downtown Boston buildings well. Because of that, it has lots of dead and weak shadowed areas in downtown Boston and the Waterfront areas, where nighttime skywaves from more distant stations can interfere.

I worked there when it was the mid-'80s incarnation of WMEX playing oldies on Stuart St. in Boston (with WMJX "Magic 106.7" at the time), right in the shadow of the Hancock tower in the direction of the transmitter. It was in AM Stereo then, but the reception was so weak at the studios that we couldn't monitor air in stereo at night without hearing other stations in the background floating back and forth from side to side in our headphones (called "platform motion" that can happen in AM Stereo when two stations are oscillating against each other on the same frequency), and even in mono we still got 10k heterodynes from stations on 1140 and 1160 at night.

It wasn't possible to get a good quality AM Stereo aircheck from the air monitors at the station (and you wanted it from the air, not from the board, to get that classic WMEX reverb and compression). Fortunately I lived in Arlington at the time less than two miles from the Lexington transmitter, and it was loud and clear in AM Stereo on my receivers there where my then-girlfriend recorded some of my shows.

It comes in better, in the same direction but farther away from the Lexington transmitter, when you also get away from the tall Boston buildings. It's somewhat better in Boston neighborhoods like Dorchester than downtown, and I used to get many requests from all over the South Shore, and even sometimes the Cape at night. In the other directions at night when I was on, I rarely got any calls from west of Route 128, or north of Route 128/95, or the North Shore.

I'd guess that 1150, as WCOP, had a better signal in downtown Boston in the decades before most of the tall buildings existed. Its original call letters stood for Copley Square Hotel where its original studios were, a location where it doesn't come in very well nowadays in the shadows of the Pru and other buildings in the Copley Square area, but it probably came in fairly well there in the 1940s.
 
Last edited:
I believe that's when they closed/moved on 590AM.

WEZE in Boston owned by Salem (or it's early incarnates) had a long life on 1260AM before that.

In September 1977, WEZE was sold to New England Continental Media, owned by Stuart Epperson. NECM was an ancestor to today's Salem Communications group, and under its ownership WEZE became a religious station.

Stu and Ed Atsinger merged their properties later; Ed started with the CA stations in 1974 in his name, Stu started a little later in Boston and North Carolina. Salem did not exist as a company prior to those two pooling assets, although the word "Salem" apparently comes from Stu's New England background.
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom