Branding Classical 94.5 WNED | ||
City WNED-FM: Buffalo, New York
WNJA: Jamestown, New York Broadcast area Western New York/Toronto Slogan Your Classical Music Station Frequency WNED-FM: 94.5 MHz
WNJA: 89.7 MHz First air date WNED-FM: June 6, 1960
WNJA: January 18, 1991 | ||
WNED-FM (94.5 MHz) is a non-commercial radio station licensed to Buffalo, New York. WNED-FM offers a classical music radio format. It is owned by the Western New York Public Broadcasting Association (formerly the Western New York Educational TV Association), which also operates PBS network affiliate Channel 17 WNED-TV and FM 88.7 WBFO (which offers a news/talk format and programming from NPR). While WNED-FM airs no commercials, it does conduct periodic pledge drives on the air to seek donations for the station. WNED-FM has local hosts in mornings, middays and afternoons, with some nationally syndicated classical music shows in the evening and on weekends. Overnight, the station uses programming from "Classical 24."
Contents
Programming on WNED-FM is simulcast on WNJA 89.7 FM in Jamestown, New York for listeners in Southwestern New York and some parts of Pennsylvania. WNED's studios and offices are at Horizons Plaza on Lower Terrace in Buffalo, and the transmitter is off Zimmerman Road in Hamburg, New York. WNED-FM and TV also maintain an office in Toronto for listeners and contributors in Canada.
Superpower Status
WNED-FM is a grandfathered "Superpower" Class B FM radio station, operating at 94,000 watts. Buffalo has three other superpower FM stations: 92.9 WBUF, 99.5 WDCX-FM and 102.5 WTSS. Under current U.S. Federal Communications Commission rules, Class B FM's are not allowed to exceed 50,000 watts ERP. WNED-FM at one time broadcast at 105,000 watts. But when it increased its antenna height some years ago, it also reduced its power. WNED-FM's signal extends into Canada. The station has listeners in Toronto, Hamilton and around the Niagara Peninsula of Ontario.
History
WNED-FM first signed on as a commercial radio station on June 6, 1960, with the call letters WEBR-FM. It was a sister station to AM 970 WEBR (now WDCZ). In the early 1970s, WEBR-FM was renamed WBCE and then WREZ. In 1975, the Western New York Educational TV Association bought it and AM 970 WEBR, turning both stations into non-commercial operations. In 1977, 94.5 was renamed WNED-FM and began offering a classical music format that same year. WNED-FM is the only station exclusively broadcasting classical music 24 hours a day in the Buffalo/Toronto media markets. (CBC-owned 94.1 CBL-FM and 90.3 CJBC-FM in Toronto both broadcast some classical music, in English and in French, respectively.)
Concert broadcasts
Nationally syndicated broadcasts of the New York Philharmonic, the San Francisco Symphony, the Pittsburgh Symphony, and the Chicago Symphony can be heard on WNED-FM. Additionally, Philharmonic Friday features the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra.
Local programs
WNED-FM has an extensive music library, which allows the station to produce local programming from 6AM to 8PM weekdays and into the weekend. WNED also produces a Fine Arts Report for Western New York and Southern Ontario, which can be heard multiple times daily and found at wned.org.
Hosts
The station maintains a large staff filling various day parts. Bob Krum starts off the day by hosting "Morning Classics" from 6 to 10 a.m., followed by Virginia Barron hosting the midday shift from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., and Peter Hall hosting "Afternoon Classics" from 2 to 6 p.m.
The "Evening Classics" program has a number of hosts including Ed Simone, Carl Lam and Lynn Engle. It airs weekdays from 6 to 10 p.m.
Other staff members include weekend hosts Steve Levinthal, Jim Berryman, John Andres, Stratton Rawson, Laura Johnson, Bill Raffel, and Marty Wimmer.