WCRN signed on December 5, 1994, carrying
religious programming from the Carter Radio Network, based out of then-sister station
WROL in Boston. In December 2000, this was abandoned in favor of a
big band format, "Swing 830". The format was changed to
oldies, via
ABC Radio's
The True Oldies Channel, in August 2004, and then to the current talk format on May 8, 2006. In 2000, the station was allowed to increase its daytime power from 5,000 watts to the current 50,000 watts. Nighttime power was also increased from 5,000 watts to 50,000 watts on April 4, 2007, just in time for the first
Boston Red Sox night game of the season. WCRN was the flagship for the
Worcester Tornadoes independent-league baseball team during the 2005 and 2010 seasons. The station is also an affiliate of the
University of Massachusetts Amherst network for football and men's basketball broadcasts. From 2007 through 2009, and since 2011, WCRN has shared the Worcester affiliation of the
Boston Red Sox Radio Network with
WEEI/
WEEI-FM satellite station
WVEI, an arrangement made in order to take advantage of WCRN's then-new 50,000-watt night signal to serve areas of
MetroWest that had difficulty receiving either WVEI itself or the team's then-flagship, WRKO, particularly at night (when most Red Sox games are played), with WVEI selling local advertising on both stations. The two stations replaced WTAG, which had carried Sox games for 40 years. WVEI became the sole Red Sox affiliate in Worcester in 2010, but WCRN returned to the Red Sox network in 2011. ==References==