WELY (1450 AM) and WELY-FM (94.5 FM) are a pair of simulcast radio stations based in the town of

Ely, Minnesota Ely ( ) is a city in St. Louis County, Minnesota, St. Louis County, Minnesota, United States. The population was 3,268 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. Located on the Vermilion Range (Minnesota), Vermilion iron range, Ely once ha ...

, United States. WELY serves the

Boundary Waters Canoe Area The Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW or BWCA) comprises of pristine forests, glacial lakes, and streams in the Superior National Forest. Located entirely within the U.S. state of Minnesota at the Boundary Waters, the Wilderness, wi ...

, which Ely is a popular gateway to, and surrounding towns and areas of northeastern Minnesota. The stations were sold to

Wisconsin Wisconsin ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest of the United States. It borders Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake Michigan to the east, Michig ...

company Civic Media as of February 2025. WELY (AM) was founded in 1954; WELY-FM was added in 1992. The new radio station, established as part of the 2025 revival of the station, is downtown. Both stations share a transmitter site south of town.

History

WELY (AM)

WELY signed on the air on October 2, 1954. Its first owner was Charles B. Persons, a Minnesota engineer who also constructed the station. Persons sold the station to WELY Corporation in 1959, and it would be operated as a side business by Vincent T. Hallett for the next 17 years. WELY changed hands again in 1963 when WELY Corporation sold the station to North Central Video, which sold the station to Northern Lakes Corporation in 1967. WELY's next owner would come in 1976, when the Northern Lakes Corporation sold it to BJL Broadcasting Corporation. In 1987, WELY suspended operations for a time due to financial difficulty, which was featured as a news story on

KSTP-TV KSTP-TV (channel 5) is a television station licensed to Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States, serving the Twin Cities area as an affiliate of ABC. It is the flagship television property of locally based Hubbard Broadcasting, which has owned th ...

WELY-FM

WELY-FM signed on the air on July 25, 1992. The original callsign was KQEK, as issued on January 17, 1992, but was changed to WELY-FM on June 5, 1992.

As a pair

WELY was owned by retired

CBS CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS (an abbreviation of its original name, Columbia Broadcasting System), is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainme ...

broadcaster

Charles Kuralt Charles Bishop Kuralt (September 10, 1934 – July 4, 1997) was an American television, newspaper and radio journalist and author. He is most widely known for his long career with CBS, first for his "On the Road" segments on '' The CBS Evening ...

from 1995 until his death on July 4, 1997. In 1999, WELY-AM-FM transferred from the estate of Suzanna Baird Kuralt to her estate's executors, Susan Bowers and Lisa Bowers White, who sold the stations to Alice L. Hill and Janice Nagel Erickson, a

Twin Cities Twin cities are a special case of two neighboring cities or urban centres that grow into a single conurbation – or narrowly separated urban areas – over time. There are no formal criteria, but twin cities are generally comparable in stat ...

transplant. In 2005, it was purchased by the Bois Forte Band of Chippewa. The stations went silent on December 1, 2022, as the transition began to the new owner Zoe Communications, Inc. of

Shell Lake, Wisconsin Shell Lake is a city in Washburn County, Wisconsin, United States. The population was 1,371 at the 2020 census. It is the county seat of Washburn County. History A post office called Shell Lake has been in operation since 1880. The city took i ...

; the $130,000 sale did not include the studios in downtown Ely, which the Bois Forte Band of Chippewa retained. The sale was consummated on April 20, 2023. The WELY stations continued to operate intermittently under Zoe, in part due to two managerial deaths. In February 2025, Zoe filed to sell the stations to Civic Media, marking that company's first acquisition outside of Wisconsin, for $70,000. The stations returned to the air with test programming in March 2025, during which WELY-FM experienced transmitter problems; a full relaunch is planned for late spring or early summer. The stations will be programmed with music formats, with some programming simulcast on AM and FM, and will maintain their longtime carriage of

Minnesota Twins The Minnesota Twins are an American professional baseball team based in Minneapolis. The Twins compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) American League Central, Central Division. The team is named afte ...

baseball; the

center-left Centre-left politics is the range of left-wing political ideologies that lean closer to the political centre. Ideologies commonly associated with it include social democracy, social liberalism, progressivism, and green politics. Ideas commonl ...

political programming that Civic Media airs on some of its Wisconsin stations will not be part of the WELY lineup.

References

External links