Radio WABY-AM (Moon)

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WABY (1160 AM) is a radio station broadcasting a Adult Standards/MOR format. Licensed to Mechanicville, New York, USA, the station serves the Albany area. The station is currently owned by Anastos Media Group, Inc. (an ownership group headed by New York City television news anchor Ernie Anastos) and features programing from ABC Radio.

WMVI signed on the air in 1979 at 1170 kHz with 250 watts, daytime only operation. It was originally owned by WPTR legend "Boom Boom Branigan" (Joe Motto) who also owned other small AM stations around the N... See more

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WABY (1160 AM) is a radio station broadcasting a Adult Standards/MOR format. Licensed to Mechanicville, New York, USA, the station serves the Albany area. The station is currently owned by Anastos Media Group, Inc. (an ownership group headed by New York City television news anchor Ernie Anastos) and features programing from ABC Radio.

WMVI signed on the air in 1979 at 1170 kHz with 250 watts, daytime only operation. It was originally owned by WPTR legend "Boom Boom Branigan" (Joe Motto) who also owned other small AM stations around the Northeast US. The station had a hybrid format of oldies, standards and big-band music, which underwent very little change until the early 1990s. During the late 80's, WMVI had secured a construction permit to switch to 1160 kHz with 50,000 watts daytime power and modest nighttime power. However, ownership could not afford the upgrades the station needed for high-power, directional operation and the permit was left to expire. Later, WMVI did secure another permit to switch to 1160 kHz with 5kW days / 570w nights, non-directional. Coming under Branigan's ownership once again in late 1995, WMVI would return after a brief period being off the air with an oldies/variety format which featured Branigan himself as the centerpiece of the station. Though the format proved popular with local listeners, the station had an extremely difficult time retaining advertising accounts due to repeated transmitter & 'telco' STL failures, forcing the station off the air repeatedly, sometimes for days at a time. As station employees moved to more secure jobs and operating funds became scarce, Branigan leased the station in 1998 to a group which aired Black Gospel music. Again, money shortages and aging, unreliable equipment forced Branigan to sell the station outright.

In August 2000, Anastos Media bought WMVI and brought it back on the air as a testing format of 1960s-70s music as Sunny 1160 before entering a simulcast with co-owned pop-standards station WUAM in Saratoga Springs. Two years later, WMVI would take the abandoned WABY calls as a tribute to its former rival and the station whose death led to its rebirth.

The WUAM portion of the simulcast ended in April 2008, with the format change of WUAM to an audio simulcast of local cable TV news outlet Capital News 9.

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