WSYR (AM)

WSYR
City Syracuse, New York
Broadcast area Central New York
Branding Newsradio 570 WSYR - Now on 106.9 FM
Slogan Syracuse's News, Weather and Traffic
Frequency 570 kHz
First air date September 15, 1922
Format News/Talk
Power 5,000 watts
Class B
Transmitter coordinates 42°59′13.00″N 76°09′09.00″W / 42.9869444°N 76.1525000°W / 42.9869444; -76.1525000
Callsign meaning (W) SYRacuse
Former callsigns WMAC (1922-1928)
Affiliations Fox News Radio, Premiere Networks, Westwood One
Owner iHeartMedia
(CC Licenses, LLC)
Webcast Listen Live
Website WSYR.com

WSYR (570 kHz) is a 5,000 Watt AM radio station licensed to Syracuse, New York and serving Central New York. Owned and operated by iHeartMedia, it broadcasts a Talk radio format under the moniker "Newsradio 570 WSYR." The station has simulcast on WSYR-FM (106.9 FM) since January 2011.

Programming

WSYR's programming is characteristic of most talk radio stations owned by iHeartMedia. It airs a local morning show, hosted by Mark Wainwright. Afternoons are hosted by Bob Lonsberry, who broadcasts his show from the studios of sister station WHAM in Rochester. The rest of the weekday schedule comes from syndicated talk shows from iHeartMedia's syndication subsidiary, Premiere Networks: The Rush Limbaugh Show, The Sean Hannity Show, Ground Zero with Clyde Lewis, and Coast to Coast AM with George Noory. WSYR also carries The Glenn Beck Program from TheBlaze Network and Savage Nation with Michael Savage from The Westwood One Network. WSYR is a Fox News Radio affiliate.

The weekend schedule includes shows on money, cars, home repair and repeats of shows run during the week, such as Limbaugh and Hannity. Also heard on weekends are syndicated shows from The Tech Guy Leo Laporte, Handel on The Law with Bill Handel and Bill Cunningham. A Sunday morning talk show with George Kilpatrick ran from 1994 to 2014; Kilpatrick now hosts a program on co-owned 620 WHEN, an Urban adult contemporary station Another long-running weekend show, The Weeder's Digest with Terry Ettinger, was canceled the same weekend Kilpatrick left WSYR.


History

WSYR is one of Syracuse's oldest radio stations. It was founded on September 15, 1922. (WFBL, now at 1390, also first signed on in 1922.)[1] WSYR's original call letters were WMAC, owned by Clive Meredith and based in the nearby town of Cazenovia. In 1928, it moved to a new studio atop the Hotel Syracuse under new calls, WSYR. For decades, beginning in 1948, it was owned by the Newhouse chain[2] alongside the Syracuse Post-Standard and Syracuse Herald-Journal. In 1946, the owners added an FM station (now 94.5 WYYY) and in 1950, a television station (now WSTM-TV).[3] For a brief time, it had another television sister when Clear Channel Communications (now known as iHeartMedia) acquired WIXT (channel 9) and brought back the WSYR-TV calls after a 26-year absence. The new WSYR-TV was sold off along with the rest of Clear Channel's television division in 2007.

Former logo prior to addition of 106.9 FM simulcast. It is derived from the logo of sister station WTAM in Cleveland, Ohio.

In late 2010, numerous indications based upon FCC filings, domain registrations, and a format change at a sister station, suggested that WSYR was preparing to launch an FM simulcast on FM 106.9. The simulcast became official at 7 p.m. on January 2, 2011, as co-owned WPHR became "Newsradio 106.9 WSYR-FM." For a time, the FM side gained priority in on-air advertising and on the Web site banner.[4] However, the AM side remained the primary station, and over the next two years most references to the FM side were cut back, to the extent that the station now refers to itself as "Newsradio 570 WSYR, Now on 106.9 FM."

Sports

For decades, WSYR was the flagship station of the Syracuse Orangemen football and men's basketball teams. Those games are now heard on Classic rock stations WTKW and WTKV, both on FM.

References

  1. Broadcasting Yearbook 1977
  2. "WSYR Sold to Newhouse For Sum of $1,200,000" (PDF). Broadcasting. June 7, 1948. Retrieved 17 December 2014.
  3. Fybush, Scott. Eighty Years of WSYR. NorthEast Radio Watch, 2002-09-19.
  4. "Urban AC Goes To AM, Talk Coming To FM in Syracuse" from Radioinsight (January 2, 2011)
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