WSYR (AM)

WSYR (570 AM) is a commercial radio station in Syracuse, New York and serving Central New York. Owned and operated by iHeartMedia, it broadcasts a Talk radio format, calling itself "Newsradio 570 WSYR." The station has simulcast on WSYR-FM 106.9 MHz Solvay since January 2011. The studios and offices are on Plum Street in Syracuse.
WSYR is powered at 5,000 watts, using a directional antenna with a three-tower array. The transmitter is off Valley Drive near Onondaga Creek.
Programming.
Weekday mornings begin with a local news and interview show with Dave Allen. 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 subsidiary, Premiere Networks: "The Rush Limbaugh Show", "The Sean Hannity Show", "The Glenn Beck Program", "Ground Zero with Clyde Lewis", and "Coast to Coast AM with George Noory". Westwood One supplies "The Savage Nation with Michael Savage".
The weekend schedule includes shows on money, cars, home repair and pets, some of which are paid brokered programming. Also heard on weekends are syndicated shows such as "The Weekend with Joe Pags", "The Tech Guy Leo Laporte", "At Home with Gary Sullivan", "Handel on The Law with Bill Handel", "Somewhere in Time with Art Bell" and "Sunday Night Live with Bill Cunningham". A Sunday morning talk show with George Kilpatrick ran from 1994 to 2014; Kilpatrick later joined 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. Most hours begin with world and national news from Fox News Radio.
History.
WSYR is Syracuse's oldest continuously operating radio station. On September 15, 1922, it signed on as WMAC, owned by Clive Meredith and based in the nearby town of Cazenovia. (WFBL, now at 1390, also first signed on in 1922.) In 1928, it moved to a new studio atop the Hotel Syracuse under the call sign WSYR. For decades, beginning in 1948, it was owned by the Newhouse chain 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). WSYR and WYYY were acquired by Clear Channel Communications in the 1990s. For a brief time, it had another television sister when Clear Channel (now known as iHeartMedia) acquired WIXT (channel 9) and brought back the WSYR-TV call letters after a 26-year absence. The new WSYR-TV was sold off along with the rest of Clear Channel's television division in 2007.
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. 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 Orange football and men's basketball teams. Those games are now heard on classic rock stations WTKW and WTKV, both on FM.