From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article refers to WBEN-FM, the Philadelphia radio station. For the former WBEN-FM of Buffalo, New York, see WTSS.

95.7 Ben FM - WBEN
City of license	Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Broadcast area	Delaware Valley
First air date	March 14, 1949
Frequency	95.7 MHz 95.7 HD-2 for Rhythmic AC/Classic Dance
Format	Adult Hits
Owner	Greater Media

WBEN-FM, known as "95.7 Ben FM", is an adult rock hits radio station stressing hot adult contemporary. It replaced WMWX - Mix 95.7 on March 21, 2005. The station plays a mix of 1970s, 1980s and 1990s hits, with some current hot adult contemporary rock singles. The station pioneered a "Playing Anything We Feel Like" radio format which gave rise to many other radio stations such as Jack FM, and is named after Ben Franklin. Like most other same-styled formats, the station broadcasts without a disc jockey. Its transmitter is located in the Roxborough section of Philadelphia. The voice of actor John O'Hurley is used for station IDs.

95.7 FM founded as WFLN by civic leaders as a "fine arts" station, and first went on the air in March, 1949, playing classical music. The station was sold in 1988 to Marlin Broadcasting. The new ownership added more news elements, sports reports, and traffic reports. From 1995 to 1997 it was bought and sold five more times, and each time cutbacks and more commercialization were made. Finally, in 1997, when the station was bought by current owner Greater Media, an ownership executive announced in September that the station's classical recordings would be sold to WRTI (Temple University), stating he felt that classical music was best- presented in a non-commercial format. The station immediately became WXXM, "Max 95.7" , playing "adult modern rock" similar but slightly softer than the station known as Y 100 WPLY, starting with Sheryl Crow's "A Change Will Do You Good." The station reported as a hot adult contemporary station to trade publications. The format didn't last long, and in May, 1999 the station became WEJM, "Jammin' Gold," playing a blend of R & B Oldies from the '60s to the '80s, disco, classic dance tunes, and some '70s pop hits. This format also did not last long, and on 6/15/01, WEJM became WMWX "Mix 95.7," returning to another incarnation of Hot AC.

At some points the station leaned toward adult modern rock. Other times the station leaned Adult Contemporary. Mostly though the station was a mainstream Hot AC similar to WPLJ in New York City. The station continued to be plagued by mediocre ratings. Meanwhile, Infinity/CBS Radio was in the process of flipping FM stations to a broadbased adult rock and pop format consisting of 2000 songs known as Jack. The famous moniker for that format is "WE PLAY WHAT WE WANT!!" These stations were mostly underperformers but a couple were decently rated oldies stations. Rumors circulated that there were plans to switched Oldies 98.1 WOGL to such a format. The result of this format competing against a Hot AC such as WMWX would be devastating to an already soft rated station.

So in March 2005, the station became "95.7 Ben," with a format they describe as "playing anything we feel like." The call letters were finally changed to WBEN-FM on May 9th. This format is very similar to the "Jack" stations in terms of quantity of songs, type of songs, and decades covered.

Arguably, while Ben FM has made some ratings inroads, 95.7 FM has never reached the same level of success since the days of the classical format.

• Both the current and original call letters invoke the name of Ben Franklin; the original WFLN stood for its owner of the time, Franklin Broadcasting.

• Buffalo radio station WBEN-AM (which was named for the Buffalo Evening News), is owned by Entercom Communications. Entercom is based in Philadelphia, even though they have no station holdings in the market.

• 95.7 Ben FM Website
• Query the FCC's FM station database for WBEN-FM