Frequency 1330 kHz | Branding 1330 WRCA | |
First air date January 30, 1948 (1948-01-30) | ||
WRCA (1330 kHz) is a commercial AM radio station licensed to Watertown, Massachusetts and serving the Greater Boston media market. The license is held by the Beasley Media Group, LLC, part of the Beasley Broadcast Group, Inc. The station has been dark since November 15, 2016, as it moves to new studios. When it returns to the air, it will be paired with an FM translator, W231BI (licensed to Boston) at 106.1 MHz. WRCA had been airing ethnic programming, but will return with a new radio format that has not yet been announced.
History
The station began operating as WCRB on January 30, 1948, owned by Theodore Jones's Charles River Broadcasting (hence the WCRB call letters). WCRB was originally a community radio station for Waltham, Massachusetts, before switching to a classical music format a few years later. An FM simulcast was added in 1954, WCRB-FM. As FM broadcasting became more popular for music listening, the AM station ceased simulcasting WCRB-FM's classical format in 1975 and became WHET, programming a big band/adult standards format from 1975 until 1978, and then a short run as a beautiful music outlet. Sales of the station to various owners led to formats such as country music WDLW for most of the 1980s, and then "Showbiz Radio" WRCA (standing for "Radio, Comedy, and Arts") in 1990 before the station began leasing time to ethnic broadcasters in 1991 with the WRCA call sign retained. The current owners, the Beasley Broadcast Group, took over in 2000 from the ADD Radio Group.
The station's long time transmitter site in Waltham was discontinued in 2007 when WRCA became one of three AM stations to share a rebuilt transmitter facility at the original site of WBOS AM 1600 on Sawmill Brook Parkway in Newton. This site is now used by stations on 1200, 1330 and 1600 kHz.
WRCA's city of license changed from Waltham to Watertown in 2007, and the power increased to 25,000 watts daytime, 17,000 watts nighttime. In addition to ethnic programming, WRCA had broadcast Northeastern Huskies men's ice hockey games.