Beaver County gets a new country & rock radio station, 'The Beaver' at 95.7-FM

BRIGHTON TWP. ― The Beaver has landed.

And that means the Beaver Valley again has a music station on the radio dial.

The Beaver 95.7-FM officially debuted this Saturday afternoon, operating out of Beaver County Radio's studios off Dutch Ridge Road, Brighton Township.

For the first time since a 2000 merger, Beaver County's two radio stations − news-talk-sports WBVP (99.3 FM and 1230 AM) and WMBA (95.7 and 1460 AM) now offer separate programming. WBVP stays as a news-talk-sports station, while the renamed Beaver 95.7-FM plays country and rock 'n' roll.

Beaver 95.7-FM made its "soft" opening Sept. 11, launching with the sounds of Jimi Hendrix playing "The Star-Spangled Banner," then Lee Greenwood's "God Bless The USA" and Alan Jackson's 9/11 song "Where Were You (When The World Stopped Turnin.'")

Throughout the week, Beaver 95.7 played a mix of country and rock from artists like Foo Fighters, Jelly Roll, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Carrie Underwood, the Allman Brothers, Brad Paisley, Bruce Springsteen, Charlie Daniels, Dierks Bentley, the Doobie Brothers, Blue Oyster Cult, Bob Seger and Billy Joel.

Frank Sparks, general manager of Beaver County Radio, made the official on-air announcement at 12:06 p.m. Saturday at the station's monthly Cruisin' on The Ridge car cruise outside its Brighton studios.

"We're launching a brand-new radio station here in Beaver County, so you'll still be able to listen to WBVP on WBVP, but WMBA is now called 'The Beaver 95.7 and 1460 WMBA effective right now," Sparks said. "You can listen online as well. It's an awesome radio station."

The station maintains its Ambridge call name heritage and primary signal area.

"This is a very big day launching the new format on 95.7 FM and WMBA," JD Turco senior vice president of St. Barnabas Broadcasting, owners of the Beaver County Radio network, said. "It's a work-in-process. It's a lot of fun. I've heard some folks listening to it and their responses have been somewhat unbelievable that we're doing a format like this, and I think it's going to be very, very, very popular. Hopefully we'll have plenty of advertisers coming our way because they're going to want to be part of it."

Beaver 95.7 becomes the first music-featured commercial radio station based in Beaver County since Froggy FM temporarily relocated its studios to Center Township for several years, starting in 2009, though Froggy maintained a Pittsburgh identity.

Rock station WWKS-FM (106.7) operated in Beaver Falls until purchased in 1996 by the forerunner of Clear Channel Communications and turned into alternative-rocker WXDX “The X at 106.7,” which moved to Green Tree and soon switched radio spots to 105.9.

Geneva College in Beaver Falls operated WGEV-FM (88.3) into the early-to-mid 2000s, playing contemporary Christian music and offering talk shows produced by students.

Scott Tady is entertainment editor at The Times and easy to reach at stady@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Beaver County Times: Beaver County gets new country & rock station, 'The Beaver 95.7-FM'