VCY America has closed on its $7.25 million purchase of Conservative Talk “103.9 Talk-FM” WFAS-FM Bronxville NY from Cumulus Media.
At 1pm today, the station debuted VCY America’s Christian network programming under new WVBN call letters. The 980w/162m Class A signal on 103.9 covers the northern parts of New York City with its coverage best in the Bronx, Northern Manhattan, parts of Queens, Westchester County, Bergen and Hudson County NJ, and extreme western Long Island.
The Wisconsin based group has been focusing its growth in recent years onto larger markets in the sunbelt using the $70 million+ proceeds from the sale of television spectrum in the 2017 repack with the 2021 acquisition of 103.3 Dallas from ESPN, and its 2020 attempted purchase of Ed Slotz’ stations in San Francisco, Las Vegas and Palm Springs. WVBN is the group’s first station on the east coast.
A longtime Adult Contemporary station focusing on suburban Westchester County, Cumulus moved the station to a tower in the Bronx in 2014 flipping it to Adult R&B “Radio 103.9” attempting to make it part of its then New York City cluster along with Country 94.7 WNSH, Hot AC 95.5 WPLJ, and Conservative Talk 770 WABC, all of which have since been sold off. WFAS-FM began running syndicated Talk programming in simulcast with its digital only sister 1230 WFAS White Plains at the start of 2022. 1230 WFAS continues to carry the programming that had also been heard on 103.9.
