History
WFRA went on the air in 1958, three years after the debut of its affiliate station, WTIV in Titusville, about 15 miles north of Franklin just north of the Crawford-Venango County border. Though within close proximity of each other, owner and founder Robert H. Sauber was allowed to put another AM station on the air because the two stations were in separate counties, thus meeting more stringent FCC ownership limits at the time.
Like WTIV, WFRA boasted a full-service format of news, talk, sports, and middle of the road music, which was typical (and still is though to a lesser degree today) of small-town AM radio stations. Though co-owned, both stations (the latter doing business as Northwestern Pennsylvania Broadcasting Company, Inc.) were still managed and operated very separately, with Sauber's son Thomas running the station in its later years.
In March 1971, Sauber put an FM station on the air, WVEN, which simulcast some programming of its AM affiliate in its early years. The station later became known as WFRA-FM. However, as more and more cars became equipped with FM radios, WFRA-FM finally broke away from WFRA completely, forming its own identity.
In July 2000, Sauber wanted to retire and put his stations up for sale. All three were purchased by Altoona-based Forever Broadcasting, LLC for an undisclosed sum. Sauber died in October 2004 at the age of 72.
Read more about this topic: WFRA
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“When the landscape buckles and jerks around, when a dust column of debris rises from the collapse of a block of buildings on bodies that could have been your own, when the staves of history fall awry and the barrel of time bursts apart, some turn to prayer, some to poetry: words in the memory, a stained book carried close to the body, the notebook scribbled by hand—a center of gravity.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)