WCRN is an AM

radio station Radio broadcasting is transmission of audio (sound), sometimes with related metadata, by radio waves to radio receivers belonging to a public audience. In terrestrial radio broadcasting the radio waves are broadcast by a land-based radi ...

Worcester, Massachusetts Worcester ( , ) is a city and county seat of Worcester County, Massachusetts, United States. Named after Worcester, England, the city's population was 206,518 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, making it the second-List of cities i ...

, owned by Carter Broadcasting. The station broadcasts at 830 AM with a transmitter power output of 50,000

watt The watt (symbol: W) is the unit of power or radiant flux in the International System of Units (SI), equal to 1 joule per second or 1 kg⋅m2⋅s−3. It is used to quantify the rate of energy transfer. The watt is named after James ...

s and can be heard from

Maine Maine () is a state in the New England and Northeastern regions of the United States. It borders New Hampshire to the west, the Gulf of Maine to the southeast, and the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Quebec to the northeast and ...

Providence, Rhode Island Providence is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Rhode Island. One of the oldest cities in New England, it was founded in 1636 by Roger Williams, a Reformed Baptist theologian and religious exile from the Massachusetts ...

, and from

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

to Springfield, Massachusetts (during the day). The signal is directional, pointed away from such other stations at 830 kHz as WCCO in Minneapolis, Minnesota. After sunset, WCRN's signal is made further directional towards the east; as a result, it is not clearly audible in Western Massachusetts after sunset. The station bills itself as " Full Service", with a

talk radio Talk radio is a radio format containing discussion about topical issues and consisting entirely or almost entirely of original spoken word content rather than outside music. Most shows are regularly hosted by a single individual, and often featu ...

format. The station simulcasts news from

WFXT WFXT (channel 25) is a television station in Boston, Massachusetts, United States, affiliated with the Fox network and owned by Cox Media Group. Its studios are located on Fox Drive (near the Boston-Providence Turnpike) in Dedham, and its ...

(channel 25) in mornings. WCRN runs music of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s at night as North Star Music. The station is owned by the Carberry family, who also own

WACE Wace ( 1110 – after 1174), sometimes referred to as Robert Wace, was a Medieval Norman poet, who was born in Jersey and brought up in mainland Normandy (he tells us in the ''Roman de Rou'' that he was taken as a child to Caen), ending his car ...

Chicopee, Massachusetts Chicopee ( ) is a city located on the Connecticut River in Hampden County, Massachusetts, United States. As of the 2020 census, the city had a population of 55,560, making it the second-largest city in Western Massachusetts after Springfield. ...

. Kurt Carberry is the vice president and general manager.

History

WCRN signed on December 5, 1994, carrying

religious Religion is usually defined as a social- cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that generally relates humanity to supernatur ...

programming from the Carter Radio Network, based out of then-sister station

WROL WROL is a radio station in the Boston, Massachusetts radio market. The station is owned by Salem Media Group and is located on 950 kHz on the AM dial. Most of WROL's programming is religious including local ministers as well as national radio ...

in Boston. In December 2000, this was abandoned in favor of a

big band A big band or jazz orchestra is a type of musical ensemble of jazz music that usually consists of ten or more musicians with four sections: saxophones, trumpets, trombones, and a rhythm section. Big bands originated during the early 1910s ...

format, "Swing 830". The format was changed to

oldies Oldies is a term for musical genres such as pop music, rock and roll, doo-wop, surf music (broadly characterized as classic rock and pop rock) from the second half of the 20th century, specifically from around the mid-1950s to the 1980s, as ...

, via ABC Radio's

The True Oldies Channel Scott Shannon's True Oldies Channel (also known more recently as ''The True Oldies Channel: Greatest Hits'') is a radio network begun in the spring of 2004. Originally distributed by ABC Radio Networks via satellite, the service plays a hybrid ol ...

, in August 2004, and then to the current talk format on May 8, 2006. In 2000, the station was allowed to increase its daytime power from 5,000 watts to the current 50,000 watts. Nighttime power was also increased from 5,000 watts to 50,000 watts on April 4, 2007, just in time for the first

Boston Red Sox The Boston Red Sox are an American professional baseball team based in Boston. The Red Sox compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) East division. Founded in as one of the American League's eigh ...

night game of the season. WCRN was the flagship for the

Worcester Tornadoes The Worcester Tornadoes were a professional baseball team based in Worcester, Massachusetts, in the United States. The Tornadoes were a member of the Canadian-American Association of Professional Baseball, an independent baseball league which wa ...

independent-league baseball team during the 2005 and 2010 seasons. The station is also an affiliate of the

University of Massachusetts Amherst The University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass Amherst, UMass) is a public research university in Amherst, Massachusetts and the sole public land-grant university in Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Founded in 1863 as an agricultural college, ...

network for football and men's basketball broadcasts. From 2007 through 2009, and since 2011, WCRN has shared the Worcester affiliation of the

Boston Red Sox Radio Network The Boston Red Sox Radio Network is an American radio network composed of 54 radio stations which carry English language coverage of the Boston Red Sox, a professional baseball team in Major League Baseball (MLB). Lawrence, Massachusetts statio ...

with WEEI/

WEEI-FM WEEI-FM (93.7 MHz) – branded SportsRadio 93.7 WEEI-FM – is a commercial sports radio station licensed to Lawrence, Massachusetts, serving Greater Boston and much of surrounding New England. Owned by Audacy, Inc., WEEI-FM is the Boston aff ...

satellite station WVEI, an arrangement made in order to take advantage of WCRN's then-new 50,000-watt night signal to serve areas of MetroWest that had difficulty receiving either WVEI itself or the team's then-flagship, WRKO, particularly at night (when most Red Sox games are played), with WVEI selling local advertising on both stations. The two stations replaced WTAG, which had carried Sox games for 40 years. WVEI became the sole Red Sox affiliate in Worcester in 2010, but WCRN returned to the Red Sox network in 2011.

References

External links

* {{News/Talk Radio Stations in Massachusetts CRN News and talk radio stations in the United States Radio stations established in 1994 1994 establishments in Massachusetts