History
The station signed on the air in 1937 as WICA (its call letters having stood for "Industry, Commerce, Agriculture"). WICA started an FM sister station, WICA-FM, on 103.7 MHz around 1950. The dial position of WICA-FM soon moved to the current spot of 97.1 MHz, duplicating the programming of the AM station. Both AM and FM stations were owned by Richard D. and David C. Rowley since their inception.
WICA and WICA-FM later became WREO and WREO-FM, taking their calls from the company name Radio Enterprises of Ohio, Inc. (albeit being formally formed on October 7, 1986). WREO would change its call sign to WFUN on July 3, 1978, taking the call letters of a legendary AM Top 40 station in Miami, Florida while eventually adopting an oldies format. The call letters WREO were retained by the sister FM station, which continues today with a Soft AC format.
In May 2000 the Rowleys sold the stations and WZOO-FM to Clear Channel. WFUN's oldies format was dropped in February 2001 for a standard news/talk format (Rush Limbaugh's show was the only one retained, as WFUN aired it since the early 90s), adding Dr. Laura, Jim Rome, Coast to Coast AM and Fox Sports Radio. Morning drive on the station remained local throughout this time, evolving into basic a local news and political talk show hosted by Roger McCoy and later by John Broom.
Clear Channel sold their Ashtabula cluster, including WFUN, in September 2007 to Media One Group (headed by Embrescia and dubbed "Sweet Home Ashtabula" as a placeholder). WFUN's programming changed on November 3, 2007 over to a sports/talk format affiliated with ESPN Radio, dropping all political talk programming and electing to go for a smaller, male dominated, core audience.
Read more about this topic: WFUN (AM)
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