City Freeland, Pennsylvania Slogan Today's Best Music | Branding 98.5 KRZ First air date 1948 (as WBRE-FM) | |
Broadcast area Northeastern Pennsylvania Frequency 98.5 MHz (also on HD Radio) | ||
WKRZ (98.5 FM, "98.5 KRZ") is a commercial FM radio station licensed to serve Freeland, Pennsylvania. The station is owned by Entercom Communications, through licensee Entercom Wilkes-Barre Scranton, LLC, and broadcasts a contemporary hit radio format. Its broadcast tower is located southeast of Wilkes-Barre in Bear Creek Township at (41°11′56.0″N 75°49′5.0″W).
Contents
WKRZ uses HD Radio, and broadcasts a rock format on its HD2 subchannel branded as "The Mountain".
History
The station first signed on in 1948 with the WBRE-FM call sign, licensed to serve Wilkes-Barre. It was the FM sister station to then WBRE AM at 1340 kHz also licensed to serve Wilkes-Barre. WBRE-FM evolved through a number of radio formats and by the 1970s was all-news. The station, up to that point, broadcast in FM mono since its start in 1948. Due to consistently low audience ratings in the area, WBRE-FM made a big change in 1980 when it was sold with the new owners switching to FM stereo, a dramatic format switch to Top 40 music, along with the call sign change to the present WKRZ. WKRZ has been broadcasting a CHR/Top 40 format since 1980, branded at first as "98½ KRZ-FM".
The present owners of WKRZ, Entercom Communications, received FCC approval in 2003 to move WAMT (103.1 MHz FM, now WILK-FM) from Freeland to Avoca. As a condition of the move, Entercom was required to change the city of license of WKRZ from Wilkes-Barre to Freeland due to FCC concerns about the "loss of local service" to Freeland because of the WAMT move. In practice, the only change was the legal ID.
Stations
One full-power station is licensed to simulcast the programming of WKRZ:
This station was originally assigned the WPMR call sign on November 29, 1989. The call sign was changed to WPMR-FM on March 11, 1992 and was off the air but began a simulcast of WKRZ in 1995. Its call sign was changed to WKRF on May 15, 1995.