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WAZL

C

CurtisNEPA

Well, we just got not just one, but TWO Spanish stations in my area......

radioinsight.com

Hola Radio Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Rebrands As Ritmo-FM; Adds Barbara Morales As GM/Midday Host

The Spanish language battle in Northeast Pennsylvania is getting personal. GEOS Communications has rebranded Spanish CHR "Hola Radio" heard on
radioinsight.com radioinsight.com

And why on earth did the WAZL call letters move to Nanticoke? They stand for "HAZLeton" and only served that town, not Nanticoke. Not Wilkes-Barre. Not Scranton.

Anyways, it sounds like this area is becoming like New York with all the Spanish music stations popping up in my neck of the woods.......
 
CurtisNEPA said:
Well, we just got not just one, but TWO Spanish stations in my area......

radioinsight.com

Hola Radio Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Rebrands As Ritmo-FM; Adds Barbara Morales As GM/Midday Host

The Spanish language battle in Northeast Pennsylvania is getting personal. GEOS Communications has rebranded Spanish CHR "Hola Radio" heard on
radioinsight.com radioinsight.com

And why on earth did the WAZL call letters move to Nanticoke? They stand for "HAZLeton" and only served that town, not Nanticoke. Not Wilkes-Barre. Not Scranton.

Anyways, it sounds like this area is becoming like New York with all the Spanish music stations popping up in my neck of the woods.......
Click to expand...
NYC only has 3 Spanish language music stations serving the whole metro. Considering that the market is 26% Hispanic, that is hardly a lot. The Scranton-WB market is only about 10% Hispanic, but growing.
 
CurtisNEPA said:
And why on earth did the WAZL call letters move to Nanticoke? They stand for "HAZLeton" and only served that town, not Nanticoke. Not Wilkes-Barre. Not Scranton.
Click to expand...
But Spanish language stations almost never use call letters for identity purposes. More likely, they have parked the call letters on that station to keep anyone else from adopting them in Hazleton.
 
lanceventa said:
Because the calls were moved with the format from 1490/100.1 in Hazleton as explained in a previous story when the actual flip took place so that 730 could feed all three translators.
Click to expand...
Forgive me for not quite understanding this however did Hazleton lose the WAZL AM call letters ? I believe they were programming Catholic,religious programming ? Are there new Call letters now ? I grew up in Hazleton in the 1950s and it was quite a nice city back then with good old WAZL 1490 AM local radio.
WAZL has had a long and professional history in Hazleton and AM radio in general. I remember when they carried two radio Networks. NBC news on the hour and the Mutual Broadcasting system at the half hour. They were owned at the time by one of the Mutual systems vice presidents. Victor C Diehm. They typified to a tee, what local radio should be.
 
JackDaily said:
Forgive me for not quite understanding this however did Hazleton lose the WAZL AM call letters ? I believe they were programming Catholic,religious programming ? Are there new Call letters now ? I grew up in Hazleton in the 1950s and it was quite a nice city back then with good old WAZL 1490 AM local radio.
WAZL has had a long and professional history in Hazleton and AM radio in general. I remember when they carried two radio Networks. NBC news on the hour and the Mutual Broadcasting system at the half hour. They were owned at the time by one of the Mutual systems vice presidents. Victor C Diehm. They typified to a tee, what local radio should be.
Click to expand...
The WAZL call letters were moved to 730 Nanticoke in October.

1490 was sold earlier this year to GEOS and is now WGMA as part of the Classic Hits "Gem 99/100" network.
 
The 95.3 and 94.9 frequencies (translators) have been spanish for nearly 3 years; Ritmo FM is a rebranding. Ritmo adds the 99.5 frequency to Hazleton; It is Hazleton's only legal, Commercial FM spanish outlet. The percentage of Hispanic population in Hazleton is 58.6 percent. The percentage of Hispanic population in Wilkes-Barre is 26.9 percent. By the way, Gem in Hazleton switched from 99.5 to 100.1.
 
kfitz said:
The 95.3 and 94.9 frequencies (translators) have been spanish for nearly 3 years; Ritmo FM is a rebranding. Ritmo adds the 99.5 frequency to Hazleton; It is Hazleton's only legal, Commercial FM spanish outlet. The percentage of Hispanic population in Hazleton is 58.6 percent. The percentage of Hispanic population in Wilkes-Barre is 26.9 percent. By the way, Gem in Hazleton switched from 99.5 to 100.1.
Click to expand...
The Scranton Willkes-Barre market is 10.8% Hispanic. Radio does not sell or market to cities. It sells to "markets" and this one is all of Columbia, Lackawana, Luzerne, Monroe and Wyoming Counties.
 
WAZL AM 1490 WVCD 97,9 FM Hazleton. Remember those days well. They carried Sixer basketball the year the team win like 7 games...1973?
 
Side note here, perhaps more germane to the DX forum, but the WAZL topic is here so .....
WAZL is about 18 air miles Northeast of me. In the day they are quite clear. At night their signal is part of the 1490 porridge, one of many of the 150 or so stations on that frequency in the U.S..
On the rare occasions when WAZL is clear and all alone at night, however, I'm figuring that the omniverous Aurora Borealis is refusing to bounce back skywave signals from on the channel, and that I'm hearing what essentially is WAZL's pure, unaffected daytime ground wave. Engineers here will correct me on that if need be.
With the Aurora so active, reception on AM to the south is, by default, enhanced. South America can come in on AM on such nights -- and even on the six U.S. local channels! One overnight back near JFK Airport I was getting nothing but Spanish-speaking stations on EACH of the 6 local frequencies except one. That night, little local WFAS 1230 from 20 miles north of me was clear and steady.
 
Steve Green NEPA said:
Side note here, perhaps more germane to the DX forum, but the WAZL topic is here so .....
WAZL is about 18 air miles Northeast of me. In the day they are quite clear. At night their signal is part of the 1490 porridge, one of many of the 150 or so stations on that frequency in the U.S..
On the rare occasions when WAZL is clear and all alone at night, however, I'm figuring that the omniverous Aurora Borealis is refusing to bounce back skywave signals from on the channel, and that I'm hearing what essentially is WAZL's pure, unaffected daytime ground wave. Engineers here will correct me on that if need be.
With the Aurora so active, reception on AM to the south is, by default, enhanced. South America can come in on AM on such nights -- and even on the six U.S. local channels! One overnight back near JFK Airport I was getting nothing but Spanish-speaking stations on EACH of the 6 local frequencies except one. That night, little local WFAS 1230 from 20 miles north of me was clear and steady.
Click to expand...
1490 is now WGMA, Hazleton; night coverage is really bad, even with 1kw and a 5/8 wave tower; 1490, the worst AM channel in the US; 1490's in Wellsboro, Lancaster, and Watkins-Glen (I was chief of that one years ago when its calls were WGMF, lol) don't help. WAZL is now 730 AM in Nanticoke (the old WNAK). KF
 
kfitz said:
1490 is now WGMA, Hazleton; night coverage is really bad, even with 1kw and a 5/8 wave tower; 1490, the worst AM channel in the US; 1490's in Wellsboro, Lancaster, and Watkins-Glen (I was chief of that one years ago when its calls were WGMF, lol) don't help. WAZL is now 730 AM in Nanticoke (the old WNAK). KF
Click to expand...
Is there still an FM antenna atop of that tower in the Hazleton Heights area ? I had lived about a half mile from their tower in the 1950s and 1960s . ( I remember their old tower )
 
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