WLLH

WLLH (1400 AM) is a commercial radio station in the Merrimack Valley region of Massachusetts. The station is owned by Gois Broadcasting, LLC, and airs a tropical music radio format. There are actually two transmitters with the call sign WLLH. Both operate at 1,000 watts using non-directional antennas on AM 1400. One is in Lowell, and there was a synchronous transmitter in Lawrence, together forming the two Ls in the call sign. (There were once plans for a transmitter in Haverhill, — the H — but it was not built.) The station has shut off the Lowell transmitter and change the City of License to Lawrence.
The Lowell transmitter is on the Merrimack River, next to the VFW Highway. The Lawrence transmitter is about 10 miles away, on Common Street, near the Lawrence Police Department Headquarters. WLLH is also heard on FM translator W236CU at 95.1 MHz in Lowell, with its 70 watt transmitter located off Holmes Road. The station uses its translator frequency in its moniker, "Mega 95.1 FM."
History.
The station that now operates as WLLH signed on the air in October 1926 as WAGS. It was only powered at 5 watts, broadcasting on 1200 kilocycles, and was licensed to Somerville, Massachusetts, near Boston. Its call letters stood for "Willow Avenue Garage Station." During September–October 1927, the station moved to Lexington, Massachusetts and it returned to the air on October 27, 1927 as WLEX at 1390 kHz with 50 watts. It was located in the home of part-owner Carl Wheeler. The other owner was Jesse Smith Dodge. The station time-shared with South Dartmouth station WMAF. On November 11, 1928, WLEX moved to 1420 kHz with 100 watts, time-sharing with Boston-based religious station WSSH.
When Wheeler's company, the Lexington Air Stations, purchased the license of WBET from the "Boston Evening Transcript" and moved it from Medford to Lexington in February 1929. The WLEX call letters were transferred to that station (now WVEI in Worcester), with the original WLEX being renamed WLEY. During this time, the stations also operated an experimental television station, W1XAY.
WLEY remained at 1420 kHz until 1930, when it moved to 1370 (concurrent with WLEX's move from 1360 kHz to 1410). W1XAY shut down in 1930, and WLEX was sold off in 1931, but the Lexington Air Stations retained WLEY until 1933, when it was purchased by Alfred Moffat, who moved the station to Lowell on October 10, 1934 and changed the call letters to WLLH six days later. Moffat boosted the station's daytime power to 250 watts from a transmitter and studio location at the Rex Center, and affiliated it with the Yankee Network; in 1936, the station also began an affiliation with the Mutual-affiliated Colonial Network.
He also began efforts to establish a second transmitter in Lawrence, which signed on the air under special temporary authority with 100 watts on December 1, 1937, with a license for the Lawrence transmitter being issued on March 4, 1941. WLLH moved to 1400 kHz on March 29, 1941 under the North American Regional Broadcasting Agreement (NARBA). Ed McMahon began his career in 1942 as an announcer for WLLH. In addition, the station began an FM sister station in 1947, 99.5 WLLH-FM (now WCRB).
A company called WLLH, Inc. acquired the stations in 1963. In the 1960s and 70s, WLLH carried a Top 40 format with local news and weather updates. By the 1980s, the stations moved to a full service adult contemporary sound. But as younger people switched to FM stations for their music, WLLH had to adjust its playlist. In 1985, WLLH switched to a country music format. The first song was "Luckenbach, Texas" by Waylon Jennings. By the 1990s, under Arnold Lerner's Merrimack Valley Wireless Talking Machine Company, WLLH had adopted an adult standards format, and was the radio home of the Lowell Spinners minor league baseball team.
The station was sold to Mega Communications in 1999, and switched to a simulcast of Spanish-language tropical music station WNFT (1150 AM, soon renamed WAMG) that April; some of WLLH's staff, as well as Spinners games, moved to WCCM (then at 800 AM, now WNNW at 1490 AM). The WAMG simulcast continued after that station moved to 890 AM in 2003, following the sale of 1150 AM (now WWDJ) to Salem Communications.
Mega sold WAMG and WLLH to J Sports in 2005. On July 24, the stations returned to English-language programming and switched to ESPN Radio. Most programming was simulcast on both stations, though WLLH again carried Lowell Spinners baseball, replacing WCAP, during the 2007 season; after that season, the team returned to WCAP.
WAMG and WLLH discontinued ESPN Radio programming on September 14, 2009. The sports format was dropped, and the stations temporarily went dark. While the station was silent, on October 9, 2009, Merrimack College announced that Merrimack Warriors ice hockey games would be broadcast on WLLH beginning on November 13.
WLLH returned to the air with test programming in late October 2009, carrying a pre-recorded loop in Spanish, with Gois Broadcasting launching the current tropical music format soon afterward. Initially operating the station under a local marketing agreement (LMA), Gois purchased WLLH outright in January 2010.
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