WZBR (1410 AM) is a

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 radio ...

broadcasting a

jazz music Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major f ...

format. Licensed to

Dedham, Massachusetts Dedham ( ) is a town in and the county seat of Norfolk County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 25,364 at the 2020 census. It is located on Boston's southwest border. On the northwest it is bordered by Needham, on the southwest b ...

, United States, the station serves the

Greater Boston Greater Boston is the metropolitan region of New England encompassing the municipality of Boston (the capital of the U.S. state of Massachusetts and the most populous city in New England) and its surrounding areas. The region forms the northern ar ...

area. The station is owned by Langer Broadcasting Group, LLC, which also owns

WSRO WSRO (650 AM HD Radio) is a radio station now broadcasting classical music. Licensed to Ashland, Massachusetts, it serves the MetroWest area. The station is owned by Alex Langer. WSRO also operates translator station W271CU (102.1 FM) in Frami ...

in the area. WZBR also operates

translator station A broadcast relay station, also known as a satellite station, relay transmitter, broadcast translator (U.S.), re-broadcaster (Canada), repeater (two-way radio) or complementary station (Mexico), is a broadcast transmitter which repeats (or tran ...

W251CR (98.1 FM) in Medford.

History

The station signed on July 17, 1961, as WOKW. The callsign changed to WAMK on September 28, 1981; to WATD on December 15, 1985; and to WMSX on April 1, 1990. On June 10, 2013, WMSX filed an application to move from Brockton to Dedham, with a transmitter in the

Hyde Park Hyde Park may refer to: Places England * Hyde Park, London, a Royal Park in Central London * Hyde Park, Leeds, an inner-city area of north-west Leeds * Hyde Park, Sheffield, district of Sheffield * Hyde Park, in Hyde, Greater Manchester Austra ...

neighborhood of

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 ...

. Langer soon announced his intention to use the station as a Boston extension of his

Framingham Framingham () is a city in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. Incorporated in 1700, it is located in Middlesex County and the MetroWest subregion of the Greater Boston metropolitan area. The city proper covers with a popul ...

-area

Portuguese language Portuguese ( or, in full, ) is a western Romance language of the Indo-European language family, originating in the Iberian Peninsula of Europe. It is an official language of Portugal, Brazil, Cape Verde, Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau and ...

station,

, with its own studios in Hyde Park. Langer signed the station on from its new site on the Hyde Park-Dedham border on October 23, 2013, testing with

. The station transmits from a small Valcom fiberglass antenna next to the river; the antenna was previously used a decade earlier (in a different location) by Langer's original WSRO (prior to its own move into the Boston area as

WAZN WAZN (1470 AM) is an ethnic radio station in the Boston, Massachusetts market, licensed to Watertown. It is owned by Multicultural Broadcasting, and broadcasts Chinese language programming, simulcast from M.R.B.I.'s New York City station. Hist ...

), and had to be cleaned up after a decade of disuse. On November 12, 2013, the station changed its call sign to the current WZBR. In early 2014, WZBR began simulcasting WSRO; the jazz programming was moved to Langer's newly acquired

Cape Cod Cape Cod is a peninsula extending into the Atlantic Ocean from the southeastern corner of mainland Massachusetts, in the northeastern United States. Its historic, maritime character and ample beaches attract heavy tourism during the summer mont ...

station,

WBAS WBAS (1240 kHz) is an AM radio station licensed to West Yarmouth, Massachusetts, and serving Cape Cod. It is owned by Bob Bittner and broadcasts an adult standards and oldies radio format. He also owns similarly-formatted stations 740 WJIB in ...

, ahead of that station joining the WSRO simulcast as well. WZBR's new facility was licensed on February 11, 2014. In December 2014, WZBR and WBAS began carrying some separate programming from WSRO; by 2015, the three stations were jointly branded as "Rede ABR". On February 3, 2016, WZBR dropped the Portuguese programming and launched an

urban contemporary Urban contemporary music, also known as urban music, hip hop, urban pop, or just simply urban, is a music radio format. The term was coined by New York radio DJ Frankie Crocker in the early to mid-1970s as a synonym for Black music. Urban contem ...

format, known as "The Bass of Boston". The new format, whose studios were located near

Dudley Square Nubian Square (formerly Dudley Square) is the primary commercial center of the Roxbury neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, located at the intersection of Dudley Street and Washington Street. It has long been the center of African American cul ...

, was operated by Frank Holder and programmed by Steve Gousby, both of whom had previously been associated with Boston's longtime Black-oriented station,

WILD Wild, wild, wilds or wild may refer to: Common meanings * Wild animal * Wilderness, a wild natural environment * Wildness, the quality of being wild or untamed Art, media and entertainment Film and television * ''Wild'' (2014 film), a 2014 A ...

. In September 2016,

New Edition New Edition is an American R&B/Pop group from the Roxbury neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, formed in 1978 by Bobby Brown. Their name is taken to mean a 'new edition' of the Jackson 5. The group reached its height of popularity in the 198 ...

lead singer

Ralph Tresvant Ralph Edward Tresvant (born May 16, 1968) is an American singer, songwriter, actor and record producer, best known as the lead singer of R&B group New Edition. As a solo artist, Tresvant released the album ''Ralph Tresvant'' (1990). In 2008, he ...

launched his Friday afternoon, radio show "Inside The Ride" on WZBR. In 2018, the station rebranded as "98.1 The Urban Heat" to reflect the sign-on of its FM translator. Langer Broadcasting took WZBR and its translator silent in mid-July 2020, due to financial difficulties; the shutdown was concurrent with the suspension of operations of WSRO and WBAS, which had continued with the "Rede ABR" Portuguese programming. The "Urban Heat" programming continues to be available online. WZBR resumed broadcasting on November 4, 2020. , WZBR served as an analog simulcast of WSRO, which had converted to digital-only operation on December 1, and was programming jazz music; after WSRO switched to

classical music Classical music generally refers to the art music of the Western world, considered to be distinct from Western folk music or popular music traditions. It is sometimes distinguished as Western classical music, as the term "classical music" also ...

in 2022, the jazz programming remained on WZBR.

FM translator

References

External links

* * {{Dedham ZBR Radio stations established in 1961 Mass media in Plymouth County, Massachusetts Jazz radio stations in the United States Companies based in Dedham, Massachusetts 1961 establishments in Massachusetts