Bloomberg Radio station in Watertown, Massachusetts
This article is about the radio station in Watertown, Massachusetts. For other uses, including former holders of the WRCA call sign, see WRCA (disambiguation).
The station began operating as WCRB on January 30, 1948, owned by Theodore Jones's Charles River Broadcasting (hence the WCRB call letters). WCRB was originally a community radio station for Waltham, Massachusetts, before switching to a classical music format a few years later. An FM simulcast was added in 1954, WCRB-FM. As FM broadcasting became more popular for music listening, the AM station ceased simulcasting WCRB-FM's classical format in 1975 and became WHET, programming a big band/adult standards format from 1975 until 1978, and then a short run as a beautiful music outlet. Sales of the station to various owners led to formats such as country music WDLW for most of the 1980s, and then "Showbiz Radio" WRCA (standing for "Radio, Comedy, and Arts") in 1990 before the station began leasing time to ethnic broadcasters in 1991 with the WRCA call sign retained. The current owners, the Beasley Broadcast Group, took over in 2000 from the ADD Radio Group.
Logo for the station prior to November 15, 2016
The station's long time transmitter site in Waltham was discontinued in 2007 when WRCA became one of three AM stations to share a rebuilt transmitter facility at the site of WUNR on Sawmill Brook Parkway in Newton. This site is now used by stations on 1200, 1330 and 1600 kHz.
Original "Bloomberg 106.1" logo, used from July 4, 2017, to October 2022
WRCA's city of license changed from Waltham to Watertown in 2007, and the power increased to 25,000 watts daytime, 17,000 watts nighttime. In addition to ethnic programming, WRCA broadcast Northeastern Huskies men's ice hockey games.
Following Beasley's acquisition of Greater Media, WRCA went silent on November 15, 2016, as it moved to new studios; it returned in May 2017 with a simulcast of "Boston's Irish Channel", the HD2 channel of sister station WBQT, as it was believed that WRCA was in the process of signal testing. The station was also paired with an FMtranslator, W291CZ (licensed to Boston) at 106.1 MHz.[5]
On July 3, 2017, Bloomberg L.P. and Beasley announced that WRCA/W291CZ would begin carrying Bloomberg Radio programming (which moved over from WXKS) beginning the following day. Concurrently, the HD2 channel of WBOS began to simulcast WRCA's programming.[6]