WBUR-FM went on the air at 4 p.m. on March 1, 1950, as a 400-watt non-commercial educational FM station licensed to Boston University. In its early years, the WBUR-FM staff was comprised of amateurs, professionals, volunteers and students.

Through the 1960s, more and more radio professionals joined WBUR and gradually transformed the station’s format. By 1971, WBUR had enough full-time employees to qualify for status as a public radio station and applied to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) for certification. In 1980, the station began to receive programming from NPR via satellite. By 1982, WBUR had established its identity as a news station, with NPR’s “Morning Edition” and “All Things Considered” broadcast each weekday and local news programming produced by a staff of young reporters. These changes coincided with the significant recognition WBUR began to receive at the local and national levels. In 1984, the station won three Associated Press (AP) awards for news coverage. In May of 1986, WBUR won the 1985 George Foster Peabody Award, the most prestigious national award for broadcasters, for “Liberation Remembered,” a four-part series on the Holocaust. WBUR has won the Peabody Award twice more since then, including an award for “Car Talk” in 1993.

John F. Kennedy in 1951, during a WBUR interview in his first political campaign.

In March 1999, WBUR-FM was named “News Station of the Year” by the New England Associated Press, an award it has since received three times from both the Regional AP and the Radio and Television News Directors’ Association (RTNDA).

Today, WBUR broadcasts with an effective radiated power of 40,000 watts and the station has continued to grow substantially in size and stature. Two daily programs are broadcast live from our Boston studios and distributed nationwide on NPR member stations: “On Point,” hosted by Tom Ashbrook (10 a.m. to 12 noon, Monday through Friday; rebroadcast 7 to 9 p.m.), and “Here & Now,” hosted by Robin Young (12 noon to 1 p.m., Monday through Friday). In addition to these award-winning programs are three others broadcast from WBUR studios on a weekly basis: the fêted “Car Talk,” with “Tappet Brothers” Tom and Ray Magliozzi, “Only A Game,” hosted by Bill Littlefield and “Radio Boston” with hosts Jane Clayson and David Boeri. “Car Talk,” distributed by NPR, is heard on more than 350 stations nationwide and is one of NPR’s most popular offerings. NPR assumed national distribution of “Only a Game” in 1997 and of “On Point” in 2004. Public Radio International began distributing “Here & Now” in 2005 to NPR affiliates nationwide. “Radio Boston” devotes an hour each week to one topic of significance to the residents of greater Boston.

Acclaim for wbur.org

Over the past decade, WBUR has garnered dozens of prestigious awards both for its news coverage and its Web site, wbur.org. This includes recognition from RTNDA, CPB, Public Radio News Directors, the Public Radio Program Directors Incorporated (PRNDI), the Massachusetts Broadcasters’ Association, Ohio State University, Columbia University, the American Bar Association, the American Medical Association and many other professional and academic organizations. Recently, these awards have included numerous first-place PRNDI and AP awards in 2007, a first-place PRNDI award and three national Edward R. Murrow Awards in 2006, the Regional AP award for “News Station of the Year” in 2005 and 2004, and RTNDA awards for “Overall Excellence,” “Feature Reporting,” and “Regional Broadcast-Affiliated Website Winner” in 2005. Most recently, in 2008, WBUR was honored with an AAAS Science Journalism Award for the Inside Out documentary “Meltdown,” as well as the CPB “My Source Community Impact Award for Engagement” for WBUR’s coverage of the new Massachusetts health care reform law. RTNDA has named wbur.org “Regional Broadcast-Affiliated Website Winner” for several consecutive years.

WBUR management

WBUR Public Radio is managed by Paul A. La Camera, a veteran of broadcast journalism, who became General Manager in October 2005. Sam Fleming heads News and Programming, Jeff Hutton directs the station’s corps of engineers. Corey Lewis is Station Manager, and Jean Wong is Director of Finance.