WPIE

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WPIE

Broadcast area	Trumansburg, NY
Branding	"Your Sportstation"
Slogan	"The Sports Giant," "All Sports, all the time"
First air date	1989
Frequency	1160 (kHz)
Format	sports
ERP	5,000 watts
Class	A
Callsign meaning	W PIE co-founder's wife was a baker
Owner	Pembrook Pines Media Group
Website	pembrookpines.com

WPIE signed on in 1989 as Tompkins County's third AM radio station and the Ithaca, New York market's 12th station on both radio bands. It broadcasts on 1160 kHz.

[edit] History

The Federal Communications Commission licensed the station on April 16, 1986 as WJCU to Elmira, New York-area radio personality Joel Clawson and local engineer William Sitzman. Two Trumansburg businessmen also were silent partners in the venture.

About three months later, the FCC approved a call-letter change to WPIE, which was chosen in honor of Clawson's wife, a baker.

The station signed on in 1989, airing an easy listening format that featured music from abroad obtained by Sitzman's programming company. Most of the music was not available commercially in the United States, and thus was not subject to licensing fees.

The studio was in a former gasoline station in the hamlet of Jacksonville, New York, about midway between Trumansburg and Ithaca on Route 96. One of the gas station's tanks had leaked several years earlier, rendering the water at the studio unpotable.

In 1991, WPIE began airing Northeast Satellite Entertainment's adult contemporary programming at night. The station began adding limited AC songs to the regular daytime format around that time.

The station began airing Trumansburg High School football and basketball games, as well as South Seneca High School football, in 1992. Sports coverage was expanded the next year, when the Elmira-based Pembrook Pines Media Group bought the station.

The new owner brought a new format, country music, which garnered the station more listeners and advertisers.

The station's sports coverage also attracted listeners. The high-school sports coverage, which featured Lansing instead of South Seneca after 1993, was complemented by New York Yankees baseball, Buffalo Bills football, Motor Racing Network, and Syracuse University football and basketball. The Yankees were an immediate hit as they had not been on the air in the Ithaca market since the 1980s despite their popularity in the community.

Within a couple of years, the station moved into a new studio at its tower site, off Seneca Road just west of Trumansburg.

In the late 1990s, Pembrook Pines switched WPIE to an all-sports format, featuring ESPN Radio, and moved its main studio into its Elmira headquarters, which includes the studios of all-sports WELM, easy-listening WEHH, urban contemporary WLVY and country WOKN, all of which serve the Elmira-Corning market rather than Ithaca.

Originally, WPIE and WELM aired different satellite-delivered programming with the exception of major sports broadcasts. Eventually, the stations began simulcasting, splitting only for WPIE's Ithaca-area local sports broadcasts.

In recent years, the station has dropped Syracuse University in favor of Penn State University, which has a limited following in the central Finger Lakes, but more of a following inthe Elmira area, which is on the border with Pennsylvania. WPIE also has aired some Ithaca College sports and Ithaca high School hockey.

[edit] Alumni

Vinnie Ferrari

[edit] External links

Query the FCC's AM station database for WPIE