WVEI (AM)

WFTQ was a AM radio station in Worcester, Massachusetts. It operated with 5,000 watts at 1440 AM.

The station came on the air in October, 1926 as WAGS with 5 Watts at 1200 AM and was licensed to Somerville outside of Boston. It later become 1410 WLEX Lexington, Massachusetts. The station then became WAAB Boston and was owned by Shepard Stores. During the NARBA frequency shift it moved to 1440 Kilohertz (1).

Until the early 1940s, WAAB station was co-owned with WNAC (now WRKO) Boston. In 1943, this ownership was broken-apart due to anti-duopoly rules (2) and WAAB moved to Worcester, Massachusetts. After several decades as WAAB, it began a FM sister station WAAF. Meanwhile, WAAB changed call letters to WFTQ ("14Q") (1) sometime in the early 1970s (13). The station owner about that time was Bob Williams (15).

In March 1981 the Katz Agency purchased WFTQ and WAAF from Park City Communications (3). In 1986 the Katz Agency sold all its radio stations (10) to NewCity Communications. This new company was organized at the time by members of Katz management to purchase all of Katz radio holdings, under its subsidiary Katz Broadcasting Co (11).

During the eighties WFTQ was known as "The Weather Station"(12). As late as 1985, WFTQ was broadcasting in stereo using the 40 Khz Kahn system (14).

During the summer of 1989 NewCity Communications, Inc. sold WFTQ and WAAF to Zapis Commuications in exchange for Atlanta station WEKS-FM (6) (7). WFTQ then underwent restructuring (6). By 1990, WFTQ called itself "The Sports Channel" and was known for broadcasting live Celtic games (5).

WFTQ's notable personalities included Donna Halper, Don Kelley, and Steve Leveille (1). However, WFTQ had massive lay-offs and began simulcasting WAAF-FM on January 15, 1991 (4).

However, during the course of the summer General Manager John Sutherland cited 18 months of "substantial losses" due to poor advertising sales (17). WFTQ changed its calls to WVEI (1) and on September 3, 1991 began simulcasting WEEI (590 Boston), a sports-talk station (1)(17) . WVEI continued to simulcast WEEI's programming when WEEI moved to 850 AM (1). WEEI is also owned by Zapis Communications (8).

In September 1994 WVEI changed calls to WWTM (2) and was known as "Worcester's Team." It briefly had a local sports format (1).

On July 31, 1996, Zapis Communications announced it was selling both WWTM and WAAF-FM to American Radio Systems (ARS) for $24.8 million (8).

On August 13, 1998 David Field's Entercom purchased both stations for $65 million from CBS as part of an anti-trust settlement of its purchase of ARS (9). WWTM resumed mostly sumulcasting WEEI programming (1).