Broadcast area Merrimack Valley | Frequency 1400 kHz | |
City Lowell and Lawrence, Massachusetts Branding La Nueva Mega Lawrence/Lowell Slogan La fuerza que te mueve! (The force that moves you!) First air date October 1926 (in Somerville)
October 27, 1927 (in Lexington)
October 10, 1934 (in Lowell)
December 1, 1937 (Lawrence transmitter) | ||
WLLH (1400 AM; "La Nueva Mega") is a radio station in the Merrimack Valley region of Massachusetts, licensed to Lowell, Massachusetts. The station is owned by Gois Broadcasting, LLC, and airs a tropical music format. In addition to a transmitter in Lowell, there is a synchronous transmitter in Lawrence, together forming the two Ls in the callsign. (There were once plans for a transmitter in Haverhill, — the H — but it was not built.) Both WLLH transmitters operate on 1400 kHz.
History
The station that now operates as WLLH came on the air in October 1926 as WAGS with 5 watts on 1200 kHz, and was licensed to Somerville, Massachusetts, near Boston. Its call letters stood for "Willow Avenue Garage Station." During September–October 1927, the station moved to Lexington, Massachusetts and it returned to the air on October 27, 1927 as WLEX at 1390 kHz with 50 watts. It was located in the home of part-owner Carl Wheeler. The other owner was Jesse Smith Dodge. The station time-shared with South Dartmouth station WMAF. On November 11, 1928, WLEX moved to 1420 kHz with 100 watts, time-sharing with Boston-based religious station WSSH.
When Wheeler's company, the Lexington Air Stations, purchased the license of WBET from the Boston Evening Transcript and moved it from Medford to Lexington in February 1929, the WLEX call letters were transferred to that station (now WVEI in Worcester), with the original WLEX being renamed WLEY. During this time, the stations also operated an experimental television station, W1XAY. WLEY remained at 1420 kHz until 1930, when it moved to 1370 (concurrent with WLEX's move from 1360 kHz to 1410). W1XAY shut down in 1930, and WLEX was sold off in 1931, but the Lexington Air Stations retained WLEY until 1933, when it was purchased by Alfred Moffat, who moved the station to Lowell on October 10, 1934 and changed the call letters to WLLH six days later. Moffat boosted the station's daytime power to 250 watts from a transmitter and studio location at the Rex Center, and affiliated it with the Yankee Network; in 1936, the station also began an affiliation with the Mutual-affiliated Colonial Network. He also began efforts to establish a second transmitter in Lawrence, which signed on the air under special temporary authority with 100 watts on December 1, 1937, with a license for the Lawrence transmitter being issued on March 4, 1941. WLLH moved to 1400 kHz on March 29, 1941 under the North American Regional Broadcasting Agreement. Ed McMahon began his career in 1942 as an announcer for WLLH. In addition, the station began an FM sister station in 1947.
By the 1990s, WLLH, under Arnold Lerner's Merrimack Valley Wireless Talking Machine Company, had adopted an adult standards format, and was the radio affiliate of the Lowell Spinners minor league baseball team. However, the station was sold to Mega Communications in 1999, and switched to a simulcast of Spanish-language tropical music station WNFT (1150 AM, soon renamed WAMG) that April; some of WLLH's staff, as well as Spinners games, moved to WCCM (then at 800 AM, now WNNW; now at 1110 AM). The WAMG simulcast continued after that station moved to 890 AM in 2003, following the sale of 1150 AM (now WWDJ) to Salem Communications. Mega sold WAMG and WLLH to J Sports in 2005; on July 24, the stations returned to English-language programming and switched to ESPN Radio. Most programming was simulcast on both stations, though WLLH again carried Lowell Spinners baseball, replacing WCAP, during the 2007 season; after that season, the team returned to WCAP.
WAMG and WLLH discontinued ESPN Radio programming on September 14, 2009; as a result, the sports format was dropped, and the stations temporarily went dark. While the station was silent, on October 9, 2009, Merrimack College announced that Merrimack Warriors ice hockey games would be broadcast on WLLH beginning on November 13.
WLLH returned to the air with test programming in late October 2009, carrying a pre-recorded loop in Spanish, with Gois Broadcasting launching the current format soon afterward. Initially operating the station under a local marketing agreement, Gois purchased WLLH outright in January 2010.