WKVB (107.3 FM) is a non-commercial radio station licensed to serve Westborough, Massachusetts, United States, carrying a contemporary Christian format known as "K-Love". Owned by the Educational Media Foundation (EMF), WKVB does not broadcast any local programming but functions as the network affiliate for K-Love in Greater Boston and Worcester. With its transmitter located in Hudson, west of Boston, its signal is supplemented by WNKC (104.9 FM) in Gloucester, which serves the North Shore and Merrimack Valley, and WLVO (95.5 FM) from Providence, Rhode Island, which covers Southeastern Massachusetts. The station also has boosters in Boston, Lexington, and Waltham. In addition to a standard analog transmission, WKVB broadcasts in HD Radio and is available online.
Historically, this station is perhaps best known as WAAF, which carried a commercial rock music format for nearly 50 years in various forms of the genre, with an active rock orientation between 1989 and 2020. The station also featured personalities including Bob Rivers, Liz Wilde and Greg Hill, and was the first high-profile radio home for Opie and Anthony in the mid-1990s. The station was sold by Entercom (now known as Audacy, Inc.) to the Educational Media Foundation on February 18, 2020. WAAF's former programming continues on HD Radio subchannels of WWBX and WEEI-FM and on the Audacy platform.
History
Early years
On October 5, 1960, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) awarded the Waterman Broadcasting Corporation, owner of WAAB (1440 AM), a construction permit to build a new FM radio station licensed to Worcester on 107.3 MHz, to transmit from Asnebumskit Hill in Paxton. WAAB-FM went on the air on June 29, 1961. In its early years, WAAB-FM simulcast the full service programming of its AM sister station; in 1967, it broke away from the simulcast and launched a stereo beautiful music format.
WAAB-AM-FM was sold to WAAB, Inc., in 1968 for $675,000. WAAB, Inc., was owned by Ahmet Ertegun and his brother Nesuhi Ertegun, as well as record executive Jerry Wexler; all had just recently sold Atlantic Records to Warner Bros.-Seven Arts. The FM station took on a new WAAF call sign on May 28, 1968;<!-- Mon --> The change from WAAB to WAAF was made to distinguish its identity.
In later years, WAAF ownership would erroneously claim a longer history than that of its own license, stretching back to experimental FM station W1XOJ in the late 1930s. W1XOJ—later given the normal call letters WGTR—was part of the first FM network, put together by the Yankee Network and its principal, John Shepard, who at the time also owned WAAB. While WAAB-FM/WAAF initially utilized the same transmission tower as this previous station, and the license for WGTR was deleted at the request of General Teleradio on July 24.
Freeform era
WAAF ended its automated middle-of-the-road programming on March 16, 1970, and introduced a live progressive rock format, which emphasized folk and folk-rock during the day and harder rock at night. It ran as a freeform station known as "WAAF, The Rock of New England", where the air talent was given total control over what music to play. The station was sold in 1971 to Southern Massachusetts Broadcasters, owned by George Gray, in an $800,000 acquisition.
On November 7, 1971, WAAF was in the middle of an all-Beatles weekend when its transmitting building was damaged by a homemade pipe bomb, knocking it off the air temporarily and causing $4,000 in damage. A group demanding the end of capital punishment and "parole law" in Massachusetts claimed it had orchestrated the bombing. The station was forced to temporarily operate on a limited schedule from the transmitter site, as the blast put its studio-transmitter link out of service. Gray sold his Worcester stations to the Robert L. Williams Broadcasting Company of Massachusetts in 1976 for $1.465 million; he had previously sold his other radio stations in New Bedford and Binghamton, New York, the year before. Robert L. Williams also owned WEZN radio in Bridgeport, Connecticut.