initially utilized the same transmission tower as this previous station, there is no connection, as the license for WGTR was deleted at the request of General Teleradio on July 24, 1953. Freeform era WAAF ended its automated middle-of-the-road programming on March 16, 1970, and introduced a live progressive rock format, which emphasized folk and folk-rock during the day and harder rock at night. It ran as a freeform station known as "WAAF, The Rock of New England", where the air talent was given total control over what music to play. The station was sold in 1971 to Southern Massachusetts Broadcasters, owned by George Gray, in an $800,000 acquisition. On November 7, 1971, WAAF was in the middle of an all-Beatles weekend when its transmitting building was damaged by a homemade pipe bomb, knocking it off the air temporarily and causing $4,000 in damage. A group demanding the end of capital punishment and "parole law" in Massachusetts claimed it had orchestrated the bombing. The station was forced to temporarily operate on a limited schedule from the transmitter site, as the blast put its studio-transmitter link out of service. Gray sold his Worcester stations to the Robert L. Williams Broadcasting Company of Massachusetts in 1976 for $1.465 million; he had previously sold his other radio stations in New Bedford and Binghamton, New York, the year before. Robert L. Williams also owned WEZN radio in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Album rocker By the mid-1970s, WAAF had settled in as an album-oriented rock outlet. The station was one of the first clients of the "Superstars" format, developed by consultants Lee Abrams and Kent Burkhart; WAAF would continue to use their services until January 1984. Promotional slogans of the period played off the call letters, including "The WAAF Air Force" and a giraffe mascot known as the "WAAF GirAAF". WAAF had completed the first of several technical improvements to reach listeners in Boston in 1972 when it increased its effective radiated power to 16,500 watts; it had operated with less than 2,000 ever since signing on. However, it was not until 1978 when the Boston Globe heralded WAAF's entry into the Boston market and its "rock radio battle". In 1977, the station managed to outrate talk outlet WMEX. 1978 saw WAAF's third sale of the decade when WAAF, its AM counterpart WFTQ, and WEZN were sold to a group of employees, known as Park City Communications, for