WBEN (930 kHz) is a commercial AM radio station in Buffalo, New York, with a news/talk radio format. Owned by Audacy, Inc., the station serves Western New York, the Niagara Falls region, and parts of Southern Ontario. The studios are on Corporate Parkway, off Interstate 290 in Amherst, while the transmitter site is along South Parkway on Grand Island. In addition to a standard analog transmission, WBEN is relayed over 98.5 WKSE's HD3 subchannel, and is available online via Audacy.
Fox News Radio provides national news coverage while WKBW-TV provides weather forecasts. WBEN airs overflow sports programming from WGR, including the NFL on Westwood One Sports and Buffalo Sabres hockey games that are played on the same day as Buffalo Bills football contests. WBEN features local talk hosts during the day, including longtime Buffalo radio personality Tom Bauerle and Medal of Honor recipient David Bellavia along with news magazines in morning and afternoon drive time. Nighttime syndicated programming includes Will Cain Country, FOX Across America with Jimmy Failla, and Coast to Coast AM with George Noory.
History
1920s
WBEN has traditionally traced its history to September 8, 1930, the date when it made its first broadcast using the call sign WBEN. However, Federal Communications Commission (FCC) records list the station's first license date as September 22, 1922, tracing WBEN's origin to an earlier license, with the sequentially assigned callsign WMAK, that was issued to Norton Laboratories in Lockport, New York. The station initially used the facility built by the Norton Laboratories organization from Boston as part of an experiment to send amplitude modulated (AM) voice transmissions between Niagara Falls, New York, and Cambridge, Massachusetts.
WMAK was a charter member of the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) radio network, being one of the 16 stations that aired the first CBS network program on September 18, 1927.