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WWPR - A History

WWPR-AM 1490 Bradenton – As far back as 1946, Bradenton’s AM-1490 studios, one-kilowatt transmitter, and tower were located on Bradenton’s Memorial Pier at the north end of 12th Street West. Then, the station was WDHL. Those calls switched to WTRL in 1952, then became WOFN (1982-84), WTRL again (1984-88), Classic Hits WKLV (1988-90), and WJRB (1990-92) before going silent in December 1992.

In December 1994, Skywave Broadcasting (Osvado Onoz, president) returned AM 1490 to the air as WYMZ. The calls became WWPR (PieR 1490) in January 1995. Pennsylvania-based Greenrose Broadcasting (Raymond Green, president) acquired WWPR from Skywave in 1997 and programmed 40’s, 50’s and 60’s adult standards. Since then, formats have included Westwood One’s satellite oldies and news/talk. In 2007, the station was acquired by Vidify Media (Daniel Silver, president).

Today (2010) WWPR is no longer on Bradenton’s Memorial Pier. Offices and studios are now at 5910 Cortez Road West in Bradenton, and programming is mostly brokered talk (West Coast People’s Radio). The station operates with a two-pattern non-directional single antenna system from the former WBRD transmitter site east of U.S. 301 on 26th Avenue East.  After moving from the downtown waterfront, station power output was dropped from 1 kilowatt to 800 watts to protect New Port Richey’s WPSO-AM on 1500 kHz.  

Other names from WWPR history include Allan Hollar (GM/sales manager/chief engineer-1995), Jack Caron (operations-1997), Jerry Cox (mornings-1998), Big Ed Edwards (operations-2006), Valerie Silver (GM-2008), and Vivian Anderson (PD).

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Station History