Charles River Broadcasting

Charles River Broadcasting was the owner of three classical music stations, one classic rock station, one CNN Headline News relay in Rhode Island, and a syndicated classical satellite delivery program service.

The company started in 1948 when WCRB first signed on at 1330 AM. In 1954, Charles River Broadcasting added WCRB-FM at 102.5 FM. In the mid 1970s, WCRB's programming was removed from the 1330 AM signal, which was relaunched as WHET, with a big-band/adult standards format. (WHET was sold in 1978 and is now WRCA.)

By the early 1990s, Charles River Broadcasting and WCRB entered into a commitment for the station to continue running classical music until 2092. Later in the decade, the company purchased WFCC-FM Chatham, WKPE-FM Orleans (both on Cape Cod), WCRI Block Island/Westerly (formerly WVBI), and WCNX Hope Valley, Rhode Island (formerly WJJF) (both in Rhode Island) from their respective local owners. In addition, a satellite service named the World Classical Network was started by Charles River Broadcasting.

The company explored a sale possibility for its stations [1] (effectively interpreting the commitment as a request and not an order), and announced in December 2005 that they were selling WCRB to Greater Media, and announced the sale of WCRI/WCNX to Judson Group, headed by Christopher Jones, in January 2006 [2]. Interestingly, Jones was a minister in the Waltham Unitarian Universalist Church, one of the few Unitarians to own a broadcasting property in the U.S. The WCRB deal with Greater Media was closed on July 31, 2006, and Greater Media announced that it would sell the physical property of WKLB-FM and the intellectual property of WCRB to Nassau Broadcasting, in exchange for WCRB's more powerful Boston signal. That deal was consummated on December 1, 2006 at noon, when WKLB's country music format moved to 102.5 FM, and WCRB's classical music format moved to 99.5 FM. In April 2007, the remnants of Charles River Broadcasting (at the time doing business as CRB Media) were WFCC and WKPE (now WOCN-FM) as well as the World Classical Network. These properties were sold to Sandab Communications (doing business as Cape Cod Broadcasting), operators of longtime Cape Cod radio station leader WQRC.

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