ELY — The excitement surrounding the rollout of WELY radio was hard to miss as station manager Terri Pylka spoke to the Tuesday Group on Aug. 12. But the return of the longtime local radio station to the airwaves hasn’t been without its hiccups.
WELY was pretty much required listening in the Ely area but had gone off the air in 2022. The station was unique, airing personal and emergency messages twice a day that could reach people without phone service, a local buy and/or trade show, polka music on the weekends, fishing reports, high school sports broadcasts, and other locally based programming. The station was also a proud broadcaster of Minnesota Twins games.
The sale of the station to Civic Media earlier this year is bringing the station back to life, with a focus on old favorites and new ideas.
Terri Pylka was hired to resume her role as station manager, and she has rehired several of the old crew, including “Trader Craig” Loughery, Polka Ron, and Todd Crego.
The studio is now located just off Sheridan St on First Ave. and includes two brand-new studios, one for the AM station and the other for the FM station.
“I didn’t know radio was my gig,” Pylka said. “I happened to get into it by accident.”
Pylka, who was raised in Ely, had worked at WDIO in Duluth as a teenager but never thought of journalism as her career. After moving back to Ely 20 years ago to care for aging parents, she ended up getting a job at WELY answering phones and working in the office.
“I just fell in love with it,” she said.
“I am so glad to be partnered with Civic Media,” she said. “They are letting us do this the right way. They are investing in us.”
The right way, she said, was letting the station embody the uniqueness of the Ely community. The station is also a way for people who visit and fall in love with the area to “take us with them.”
Civic Media doesn’t bring a team in to run the station, she said, but they work to “build the station that the community wants.” They also are supplying the tech and engineering support needed to run a station today.
“They are our backbone,” she said. “They bring in resources.”
A recent lightning storm damaged some of the AM transmitter equipment, but the engineering team was there right away to make repairs and to upgrade the system to hopefully make sure the same problem doesn’t happen again.
The main station, 94.5 FM, is not yet on the air, but Pylka said they hope to be on the air this fall.
“So much work needed to be done on that,” she said. “We’ve had our share of hurdles, but it hasn’t stopped us.”
She said all the equipment they need has been ordered, but they can’t promise when everything will get delivered.
“I am hoping it will be up before the leaves fall,” she said, “but don’t want to say that out loud.”
New ways to listen, new programming
A big change is the station now has its own team of meteorologists, giving forecasts for the immediate Ely region. They are also able to give out severe weather alerts and warnings.
“Last Friday, with imminent weather coming through, we were able to broadcast warnings. That is really exciting,” Pylka said.
Another new feature will be community event notices broadcast throughout the day.
“We want content that people will listen to,” she said. “We don’t want to just fill up air.”
Right now, people can stream WELY’s AM station online at wely.fm. WELY is also on the AM airways at 1450.
When 94.5 FM comes back online, the signal will be stronger, giving the station a much wider reach, with 35,000 watts that will push the signal almost to Hibbing.
“We will be reaching Tower-Soudan, Babbitt, and more,” she said. “We want their voices on the radio as well.”
The station will once again be broadcasting Twins baseball, and they also just signed a seven-year contract to broadcast Vikings football. Both will only be available while listening to the radio, not through online streaming, due to licensing rules.
National news will come via CBS on the hour and half hour, and they are looking at adding more local news also.
Advertising will be another hurdle for the station to conquer.
“Our community is very small and tourism ebbs and flows,” Pylka said. “But we are building a strong foundation of ad packages.”
She said they will be able to accommodate all sizes of advertising budgets, and right now, she noted they have excess ad spots to fill, so smaller ad buys might end up getting more airtime than they have paid for.
“Our competition is podcasts, streaming music, and social media,” she said. “We need to build a product that can compete with that.”
As far as music, the AM station will be focusing on the “oldies,” which now includes music from the 70s, she said with a laugh. The FM station will focus on newer music from the 80s to today.
“We will be offering music for absolutely everybody,” she said.
The station is also looking for volunteers to help with programming, answering phones, and other duties. People can call the studio at 218-365-4444. They are also looking for someone interested in broadcasting high school sports.
Equipment to do live remote broadcasts just arrived, she said, and they are hoping to use it as much as possible.
Another new option is a text line into the station. People can text or call in requests, for example, to the polka show on Saturday mornings at 218-365-4444 or email info@wely.fm. You can follow WELY on Facebook (search for WELY Radio).
WELY history
WELY AM first came on the air in 1954, and its first owner was Charles Persons, an engineer who also constructed the station. Over the years, it underwent many ownership changes. The FM station came on air in 1992, and its most famous owner, the CBS journalist Charles Kuralt, purchased the station in 1995, nicknaming it the “end of the road radio.” After Kuralt’s death in 1997, his estate sold the station again, and in 2005 it was sold again to the Bois Forte Band. The station went off the air in 2022. In 2023 the station was sold again, and then finally in 2025, sold to Civic Media.
Pylka said they are still looking for old WELY memorabilia and other items. When the station sold, they didn’t get anything except for the actual radio license.
“I know stuff is out there,” she said. They are also looking for any audio recordings people may have made of old shows. This will help them bring back some favorites from years ago.
End of the road no more
“We are not going to call ourselves the end of the road anymore,” Pylka said. “We want to run with a fresh take.” The station will still honor the legacy of Charles Kuralt, but it will be with a new vision, she said.
“Local radio isn’t going to be polished; we won’t sound like other stations. We will be Ely voices, and I apologize if you hear my dog, Daisy, barking in the background!”