City South Bend, Indiana Frequency AM 1580 kHz Format Regional Mexican | Branding La Raza First air date 1947 | |
Power 1,000 watts day
500 watts night | ||
WHLY is a Regional Mexican radio station in South Bend, Indiana, broadcasting at 1580 on the AM dial.
On May 1, 2013, WHLY adopted its current Regional Mexican format as La Raza 1580 AM. It had previously aired a Catholic format, from December 8, 2006 until May 1, 2013, and was operated by the St. Thomas More Foundation of Elkhart, Indiana, broadcasting EWTN Radio programming. The station is currently operated by Ignacio Zepeda, who also owns WKAM 1460 AM in Goshen, and an outright sale of the station to Zepeda's IB Communications, Ltd. is pending.
The station began broadcasting on December 22, 1947 as WJVA 1580 as a 250 watt daytime-only station. Studio and transmitter were on Hickory Road in Mishawaka, IN.
It has used several different call signs since the early 1980s, including WAMJ and WIWO. The WHLY calls were first used at AM 1580 in 1994 as "Radio Hollywood," using Westwood One's Adult Standards nostalgia-based music format.
1580 AM was owned by Times Communications but from 1999 to 2006 was operated by Artistic Media Partners under an LMA.
WHLY gained a sister station in November 1998 when 1620 AM WJVA signed on. A simulcast of AM 1580 at first, AM 1620 picked up the "Radio Hollywood" standards format and WHLY calls on a permanent basis after a few months, while the WJVA calls moved to AM 1580, which flipped to classic country, in February 1999. The country format ended in March 2001 and 1580 and 1620 once again began to simulcast, setting in motion a complicated series of call letter and format changes that would continue over the next five years:
In 2006, Times Communications' LMA with Artistic Media Partners expired, and Times leased WHLY to St. Thomas More Foundation, who debuted the current format. Former sister station AM 1620 is now WDND.