WHYA


WHYA —branded Y101—is a Top 40 FM radio station licensed to Mashpee, Massachusetts, owned by CodComm, Inc. The station's studios are in downtown Hyannis and its transmitter is located in West Barnstable. WHYA airs syndicated programs, like Elvis Duran, Party LiveLine! with Mason Kelter and Saturday night hosted by John Garabedian, along with Joe Breezy's Celebrity Top 10 on Saturday mornings. It was an affiliate of Open House Party on Saturday and Sunday nights from the station’s launch until March 2020. Station owner John Garabedian hosted Open House Party's Saturday show until January 2017. As of May 23, 2020 he hosts Saturday nights again on Party LiveLine!.

History

On April 1, 2013, at 5:00 p.m., WHYA broke away from its simulcast with 93.5 WFRQ and began stunting with an automated countdown. A male text-to-speech voice repeated a sequence of counting backward in the format of "T minus x days, x hours, x minutes, x seconds".
A rotating list of statements was also inserted approximately every fifteen seconds. The statements ranged from informing listeners that Frank FM had moved to 93.5 and doubled its power, to random and sometimes amusing quotes from movies, songs and current events. Occasionally, some statements also hinted about two of the on-air personalities that would eventually be on the new station, including "Who's Steve McVie?" and "What's a Jackson Blue?"
On April 4, 2013, at 11:00 a.m., the stunt ended with a message by radio personality John Garabedian to launch the new CHR-formatted Y101. Y101's first song was "Party Rock Anthem" by LMFAO. The new format filled a 4-year void that the former WRZE "96-3 The Rose" left when it switched to sports radio on March 25, 2009. However, some Cape Cod market listeners could pick up CHRs from Providence, RI, New Bedford-Fall River or Boston. Ironically, CodComm's founding fathers John Garabedian and Steve McVie both played a role in the former WRZE. Garabedian placed the original 96.3 transmission facility on the air in the 1970s and WRZE was an affiliate of his Open House Party program, while McVie was the last on-air personality heard on WRZE.
On August 20, 2013, CodComm submitted a license application with the FCC to cover an outstanding construction permit originally filed on July 17, 2012. This completed a move of the WHYA transmission facility from Mashpee to Barnstable at the tower of sister station WPXC. The change included dropping power from 6 kW to 2.9 kW, but raising its antenna from 272' to 463' above average terrain.