Forerunner WOCB (AM) WXTK is the direct descendant of Cape Cod's first commercial radio station, WOCB. The
AM radio station WOCB first
signed on the air on October 2, 1940. It was originally owned by the Cape Cod Broadcasting Company. It originally operated at 1210 kHz, but moved to 1240 in 1941 as a result of the
North American Regional Broadcasting Agreement (NARBA). (The 94.3 frequency is now used on Cape Cod by WZAI, the
Brewster repeater for
WCAI.) By the 1970s, WOCB-FM had broken away from simulcasting the AM during midday and evening hours to broadcast
easy-listening music while still simulcasting the AM's format (then
adult contemporary, with a heavy news commitment. It stayed with the AM station during weekday
drive times and hourly newscasts the rest of the broadcast day. The FM call letters were changed to WSOX-FM in 1978. WRZE in 1984, WJFK in 1985, back to WOCB-FM in 1987, WJIB in 1990 (shortly after the call sign was dropped by 96.9 FM in Boston, now
WBQT), and then WOCB-FM once more in 1991. In the summer through winter of 1981, the afternoon drive announcer on WOCB was
Edd Hall, who subsequently did voice work for
Late Night with David Letterman from 1982 to 1990 and was the announcer on
The Tonight Show with Jay Leno from 1992 to 2004.
Hurricane Bob In 1991,
Hurricane Bob blew down WOCB's transmitter tower, and the damage suffered was so severe that the owners could not afford to rebuild. The station was then sold to Ernie Boch Sr., an automobile dealer in the
Boston suburb of
Norwood, Massachusetts, who turned WOCB-FM into the flagship station for his new Boch Broadcasting company. The station's first news director, Hal Lamb, applied to the FCC to change the station's calls to WXTK, or "X-Talk", a reference to the rarity of the news/talk format on the FM dial at the time. WXTK initially planned to brand it as "Extreme Talk", but did not do so, though a few station IDs were produced using the branding (as late as 1998, the unused IDs were still in the station archives). Despite this, WXTK went through with the change to news/talk, and secured several
syndication agreements, including the right to broadcast
The Rush Limbaugh Show.
Limbaugh himself acknowledged his newest affiliate by remarking on-air, "I am now beaming into
Kennedy compound." Over the next few years, the station also became the Cape's home of
G. Gordon Liddy (cancelled from the station as of July 2006) and
Howie Carr, and longtime local morning hosts Ed Lambert and Don McKeag. Concurrent with the WXTK relaunch, WOCB's AM 1240 facility became WUOK. Under those call letters it programmed
CNN Headline News,
sports radio, and finally a WXTK simulcast. In 1997, Boch donated WUOK to
Boston University for use as a relay of
WBUR-FM in Boston, under the call sign WBUR (AM). AM 1240 now broadcasts as
WGTX.
Change in frequency In July 1996, WXTK filed an application with the FCC to change frequencies from 94.9 to 95.1 MHz. The application was granted on May 20, 1997. The move was in response to listener complaints of co-channel interference (when two stations on the same frequency interfere with each other) from
WHOM on
Mount Washington. The move took effect on-air on September 18, 1997; to ease people into the new frequency, there were two weeks of promotional material over-the-air, and after the switch its branding was changed to "95.1 is 95 WXTK", putting stress on the word "is". When WXTK moved to 95.1, it had to operate "directionally" with a signal limited towards
WHRB in
Cambridge.
Changes in ownership In 2005, Boch Broadcasting sold WXTK and its sister stations to Qantum Communications, owner of WRZE (now
WEII, a simulcast of sports radio
WEEI-FM) and
WCIB. However, Qantum had to sell WTWV/WDVT (now
WHYA and
WFRQ) to
Nassau Broadcasting in order to stay within FCC regulations. Until that sale, WOCB/WXTK had been broadcasting from the same studio building for over 60 years. On May 15, 2014, Qantum Communications announced that it would sell its 29 stations, including WXTK, to Clear Channel Communications (now iHeartMedia), in a transaction connected to Clear Channel's sale of
WALK AM-
FM in
Patchogue, New York, to
Connoisseur Media via Qantum. The transaction was consummated on September 9, 2014. ==References==