| Community: | Brookline | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Frequency: | 1600 kHz | ||
| Class: | B | ||
| Ownership: | Champion Broadcasting Systems, Inc. (Herbert Hoffman) |
||
| Studio: | 160 North Washington St. Boston, MA 02114-2120 |
||
| Transmitter: | 750 Saw Mill Brook Parkway Newton, MA 02459-3647 |
||
| Phones: |
|
||
| Format: | Leased-time ethnic |
WUNR broadcasts from a two-tower guyed array in the Oak Hill section of Newton, with 5 kW day and night. WUNR's DA-1 pattern protects co-channel WWRL New York, and also provided protection for now-deleted WQQW 1590 Waterbury, Connecticut. A third tower on the site was destroyed in a storm in the 1970s and never rebuilt.
WUNR holds a construction permit for 20 kW-U, DA-2, from a new five-tower array being constructed at the existing site. When completed, WUNR will share this site with WRCA 1330 and WKOX 1200. The permit was granted in May of 2002, but due to zoning issues, a local building permit was not granted until mid-2006. The two existing towers will be removed; the new towers, which will be arranged in a pentagon, will be 195 feet tall and thus not require painting or nighttime illumination.
The 1600 story in Greater Boston began in 1948, with the debut of WVOM, one of many small independent stations that went on the air after the war.
In 1955, WVOM was sold to Herbert Hoffman's Champion Broadcasting and became WBOS, calls that had previously been used by Westinghouse for the shortwave sister station to WBZ/WBZA. From that time until the present, most of the station's broadcast day has been taken up by foreign-language programming directed at Boston's many ethnic communities.
WBOS added FM service on 92.9 MHz in the late 1950s, and as the FM station began breaking away with its own programming, Hoffman changed the AM calls, in 1976, to WUNR. The new calls were meant to reflect the station's status as a ``United Nations of Radio'' for Greater Boston. Hoffman sold the FM station in 1984.
In the 1980s, WUNR's studios moved into the Hoffman Building on North Washington Street in Boston's North End.
In 2002, WUNR received a construction permit for an upgrade to 20 kW-U DA-2; actual construction on the site began in late 2006, with the new facility expected to be operational in mid-2007.
This station profile was written by the editors of The Archives @ BostonRadio.org. We have no relationship with the station; please send any comments or questions about their programming directly to the station. Network connectivity courtesy of MIT CSAIL.
[ Home | Contact | Legal | Updated: 2007-02-10 | Validate this page ]