The station first began operation November 12, 1972, It was a
full service daytime station for Natick and
MetroWest, programming
top-40 music. WGTR originally from a small tower in a residential area of Natick. However, Garabedian had long hoped to expand WGTR into Boston itself. In 1980, he won a construction permit to move to a five-tower setup in
Ashland, operating at 25,000 watts during the day. This gave it adequate coverage of most of the Boston area. Plans called for WGTR to power down to 2,500 watts at night to protect
KYW in
Philadelphia and
WBZ in Boston; the latter station operated at adjacent 1030 AM.
Westinghouse Broadcasting, owner of both KYW and WBZ, complained that the Ashland site would not provide enough protection for those stations. As a result, WGTR was only allowed to operate at 1,700 watts at night. Meanwhile, as Garabedian turned his focus to
FM radio station WGTF on
Nantucket (now
WEII) and, later, music video station
WVJV-TV channel 66 in nearby
Marlborough (now
WUNI), 1060 would go through several formats:
all-news,
adult standards via the
Stardust service (as WSTD), 1060 would thus leave the air November 3, 1994, following a transitional period in which WBMA operated in the daylight hours and WBIV at night. and the station announced a format swap with WRPT (which took on the WJLT call sign), once again adopting a talk format. This took effect on-air January 24, 2000, accompanied by a power boost to 40,000 watts from Framingham. In 2001, Langer leased the station to asset manager Brad Bleidt, who changed the calls to WBIX and implemented a business talk format. and poured most of his efforts into making WBIX a 24-hour operation once again. In 2004, WBIX began nighttime operations from its old site in Ashland, operating at 2,500 watts. Bleidt ultimately pleaded guilty to
mail fraud and
money laundering and was sentenced to 11 years in prison. Bleidt had planned to sell the station to real estate investor
Chris Egan in 2004. After the sale's completion on September 15, 2010, WBIX went silent. The call letters were changed to WQOM on September 20; on November 1, it went on air shortly before 8:00 a.m. with inspirational music followed by a Mass conducted by
Cardinal Sean O'Malley. He welcomed the new station to the air. ==References==