WPLY (Mount Pocono, Pennsylvania)

WPLY (960 AM) was a radio station licensed to serve Mount Pocono, Pennsylvania, United States. It was owned by Nassau Broadcasting Partners.

WPLY
Broadcast areaStroudsburg, Pennsylvania
Frequency960 kHz
Programming
FormatDefunct (was News/Talk)
Ownership
Owner
History
First air date
March 1981 (1981-03)
Last air date
June 27, 2011 (2011-06-27)
Former call signs
WPCN (1980–1992)
WPMR (1992–1996)
WILT (1996–2005)[1]
Technical information
Facility ID67060
ClassD
Power1,000 watts (day)
24 watts (night)
Transmitter coordinates
41°4′41″N 75°23′33″W

It broadcast a news/talk radio format,[2] simulcasting with WVPO (840 AM) in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania.

History


The station originally signed on in April 1981 as WPCN. The locally-owned community station was notably innovative at the time for installing serial #1 of the Continental Model 314R1 PWM transmitter, which ushered in an era of enhanced audio fidelity and efficient, power-saving operation. (It has since been replaced with a Harris Gates One.) The four towers, employing elevated feeds, were guyed with non-conductive Phillystran cable, also innovative at the time.

It was assigned the WPLY call letters by the Federal Communications Commission on March 10, 2005.[1]

In January 2012, the Federal Communications Commission issued a notice of apparent liability and proposed a $17,000 fine against Nassau Broadcasting II, stating WPLY "willfully and repeatedly violated" FCC regulations. It stemmed from a random inspection at WPLY's facilities in March 2010, when it was discovered the station had been transmitting from only one of its four antennas at greatly reduced power (250 watts) without receiving authorization, and had been doing so since Nassau purchased the station in 2000. FCC regulations require that stations unable to operate at full power must apply for a temporary authorization to operate at reduced power, which WPLY did only after the 2010 inspection, claiming that the station's antenna array was "severely deteriorated" and in need of extensive repairs.[3]

The notice also stated that WPLY did not maintain an FCC-required public file, and that station personnel claimed they had never kept such a file.[3]

WPLY left the air June 27, 2011 to determine if its antenna system needed to be repaired or replaced.[4] It never resumed broadcasting, and on March 6, 2014 its license was canceled for failure to broadcast for a year.[5]

The towers were dismantled and removed in early 2019, and the site, at the intersection of Interstates 380 and 80, has remained vacant.

References
  1. "Call Sign History". FCC Media Bureau CDBS Public Access Database.
  2. "Station Information Profile". Arbitron.
  3. Muschick, Paul (January 25, 2012). "Stroudsburg radio station faces FCC fine". The Morning Call. Retrieved 2012-02-07.
  4. "Notification of Suspension of Operations / Request for Silent STA". CDBS Public Access. Federal Communications Commission. June 27, 2011. Retrieved March 13, 2014.
  5. Doyle, Peter H. (March 6, 2014). "In re: WPLY(AM), Mount Pocono, PA" (PDF). CDBS Public Access. Federal Communications Commission. Retrieved March 13, 2014.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.