Early years
On April 28, 1949, New Rochelle Broadcasting Service, Inc. filed for a construction permit to build a new radio station at 1460 kHz in New Rochelle. The permit was granted on June 22, 1950, and WGNR began broadcasting on September 9, 1950.[3] WGNR-FM 93.5 had already launched in September 1948.[4]
New Rochelle Broadcasting Service, however, went bankrupt in 1952, signing the station off on August 1. After the appointment of a receiver, Radio New Rochelle, Inc., owned by the Iodice Family, acquired the station and changed the call letters to WNRC on both the AM and FM stations.[5][6] WNRC returned to the air in October 1953; it retained those call letters through a transfer of control to the Daniels family in 1955.[5]
WNRC became WWES-AM-FM on December 10, 1958, as the station was sold to Radio Westchester for $225,000. The Radio Westchester sale made it a sister station to WVIP in Mount Kisco, serving lower Westchester County.[7] On February 26, 1959, however, the station would change its call sign to WVOX, which remains in use as of January 2024.
WVOX
WVOX joined a radio operation owned by the New York Herald-Tribune newspaper in the early 1960s. By 1962, after John Hay Whitney bought the Herald-Tribune the year before, the paper's radio division included WVOX-AM-FM, WVIP, WGHQ at Kingston and WFYI (now WJDM) in Mineola.[8] With the Herald-Tribune closed, Whitney Communications sold WVOX-AM-FM and WGHQ-AM-FM in 1968 to Hudson-Westchester Radio in an $800,000 acquisition.[9] Hudson-Westchester was led by William O'Shaughnessy, a former account executive with the Herald-Tribune Radio Network who had been WVOX's general manager since 1965.[10]
WVOX evolved into a community-oriented talk radio station, which by 1973 had a reputation for local color and gossip of Westchester County. That year, it moved out of its former studios to new facilities at the station's transmitter site in New Rochelle.[11][12] O'Shaughnessy hosted a daily talk show on the station for more than 50 years, featuring interviews with U.S. politicians, authors, and entertainers.[13] The Wall Street Journal described WVOX as the "quintessential community radio station in America".[14] [15] In 2005, O'Shaughnessy was one of the first 25 people to be inducted into the new New York State Broadcasters Hall of Fame by the New York State Broadcasters Association.[16] He was honored for his long record as a champion of free speech under the First Amendment.[14]
The programming of WVOX during the 1970s included local news shows that were dedicated to towns in its coverage area, such as Mount Vernon and Pelham The call-in show "Open Line", which often exceeded its allotted time slot, was also part of the programming lineup. Ethnic and religious blocks were also featured, along with music when the station didn't have a talk show on the air.[17]
Following his departure from WEVD in 2001, Bill Mazer had an afternoon interview program on WVOX (and streamed from WVOX's website), with his son Arnie as producer. Mazer's last show was aired August 3, 2009, ending his tenure at the station and marking his retirement from broadcasting.