WFUN (970
AM) ā branded as ESPN 970 WFUN ā is a commercial
sports
Sport pertains to any form of competitive physical activity or game that aims to use, maintain, or improve physical ability and skills while providing enjoyment to participants and, in some cases, entertainment to spectators. Sports can, ...
radio station
Radio broadcasting is transmission of audio (sound), sometimes with related metadata, by radio waves to radio receivers belonging to a public audience. In terrestrial radio broadcasting the radio waves are broadcast by a land-based radi ...
in
Ashtabula, Ohio
Ashtabula ( ) is a city in Ashtabula County, Ohio, United States, and the center of the Ashtabula micropolitan area. It is located at the mouth of the Ashtabula River on Lake Erie, northeast of Cleveland. As of the 2020 census, the city ha ...
. Owned by Media One Radio Group, it serves
Ashtabula County, Ohio
Ashtabula County ( ) is the northeasternmost county in the U.S. state of Ohio. As of the 2020 census, the population was 97,574. The county seat is Jefferson. The county was created in 1808 and later organized in 1811. The name Ashtabula d ...
and parts of the
Erie, Pennsylvania
Erie (; ) is a city on the south shore of Lake Erie and the county seat of Erie County, Pennsylvania, United States. Erie is the fifth largest city in Pennsylvania and the largest city in Northwestern Pennsylvania with a population of 94,831 ...
region. It is one of five stations in Media One Radio Group's Ashtabula cluster, the others being
WFXJ-FM,
WQGR (FM) WREO-FM,
WYBL (FM), and
WZOO-FM.
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
In broadcasting, sister stations or sister channels are radio or television stations operated by the same company, either by direct ownership or through a management agreement.
Radio sister stations will often have different formats, and somet ...
, WICA-FM, on 103.7
MHz
The hertz (symbol: Hz) is the unit of frequency in the International System of Units (SI), equivalent to one event (or cycle) per second. The hertz is an SI derived unit whose expression in terms of SI base units is sā1, meaning that one h ...
around 1950. WICA-FM's frequency soon thereafter moved to 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
In the music industry, the Top 40 is the current, 40 most-popular songs in a particular genre. It is the best-selling or most frequently broadcast popular music. Record charts have traditionally consisted of a total of 40 songs. "Top 40" or "conte ...
station in
Miami
Miami ( ), officially the City of Miami, known as "the 305", "The Magic City", and "Gateway to the Americas", is a coastal metropolis and the county seat of Miami-Dade County in South Florida, United States. With a population of 442,241 at th ...
,
Florida
Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, a ...
while eventually adopting an oldies format. The call letters WREO were retained by the sister FM station, which continues today with a Soft
Adult Contemporary
Adult contemporary music (AC) is a form of radio-played popular music, ranging from 1960s vocal and 1970s soft rock music to predominantly ballad-heavy music of the present day, with varying degrees of easy listening, pop, soul, R&B, quiet ...
format.
In May 2000 the Rowleys sold the stations and
WZOO-FM to
Clear Channel Communications
iHeartMedia, Inc., formerly CC Media Holdings, Inc., is an American mass media corporation headquartered in San Antonio, Texas. It is the holding company of iHeartCommunications, Inc. (formerly Clear Channel Communications, Inc.), a company fou ...
. WFUN's oldies format was dropped in February 2001 for a standard
news/
talk
Talk may refer to:
Communication
* Communication, the encoding and decoding of exchanged messages between people
* Conversation, interactive communication between two or more people
* Lecture, an oral presentation intended to inform or instruct
...
format (
Rush Limbaugh
Rush Hudson Limbaugh III ( ; January 12, 1951 ā February 17, 2021) was an American conservative political commentator who was the host of '' The Rush Limbaugh Show'', which first aired in 1984 and was nationally syndicated on AM and FM r ...
's show was the only one retained, as WFUN aired it since the early 90s), adding
Dr. Laura,
Jim Rome
James Phillip Rome (born October 14, 1964) is an American sports radio host. His talk show, '' The Jim Rome Show'', is syndicated by CBS Sports Radio.
Broadcasting from a studio near Los Angeles, California, Rome hosts ''The Jim Rome Show'' o ...
, ''
Coast to Coast AM
''Coast to Coast AM'' is an American late-night radio talk show that deals with a variety of topics. Most frequently the topics relate to either the paranormal or conspiracy theories. It was hosted by creator Art Bell from its inception in ...
'' and
Fox Sports Radio
Fox Sports Radio is an American sports radio network. Based in Los Angeles, California, the network is operated and managed by Premiere Networks in a content partnership with Fox Corporation's Fox Sports division and iHeartMedia, parent company ...
. 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 Communications
iHeartMedia, Inc., formerly CC Media Holdings, Inc., is an American mass media corporation headquartered in San Antonio, Texas. It is the holding company of iHeartCommunications, Inc. (formerly Clear Channel Communications, Inc.), a company fou ...
sold their Ashtabula cluster, including WFUN, in September 2007 to Media One Radio 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
ESPN Radio, which is alternately platform-agnostically branded as ESPN Audio, is an American sports radio network and extension of the ESPN television network. It was launched on January 1, 1992, under the original banner of "SportsRadio ESPN" ...
, dropping all political talk programming and electing to go for a smaller, male dominated, core audience.
Since 2012 WFUN has served as the ESPN Radio affiliate for
Erie, Pennsylvania
Erie (; ) is a city on the south shore of Lake Erie and the county seat of Erie County, Pennsylvania, United States. Erie is the fifth largest city in Pennsylvania and the largest city in Northwestern Pennsylvania with a population of 94,831 ...
due to
WRIE taking the
CBS Sports Radio
CBS Sports Radio is a sports radio network that debuted with hourly sports news updates on September 4, 2012, and with 24/7 programming on January 2, 2013.
CBS Sports Radio is owned by Paramount Global and distributed by Westwood One. Programmin ...
affiliation. In August 2021 the
Erie Otters
The Erie Otters are a Major junior ice hockey team based in Erie, Pennsylvania. They are members of the Midwest division of the Ontario Hockey League (OHL), one of only three American teams in the circuit. The team name refers to the North Am ...
announced a radio broadcast partnership with WFUN beginning in the 2021-2022 OHL season.
WICA-TV

Richard D. and David C. Rowley, the founders of WICA-AM-FM, also started WICA-TV on channel 15 in the 1950s. Hampered both by broadcasting on the (then relatively unknown)
UHF
Ultra high frequency (UHF) is the ITU designation for radio frequencies in the range between 300 megahertz (MHz) and 3 gigahertz (GHz), also known as the decimetre band as the wavelengths range from one meter to one tenth of a meter ...
dial, and with no
network affiliation
In the broadcasting industry (particularly in North America, and even more in the United States), a network affiliate or affiliated station is a local broadcaster, owned by a company other than the owner of the network, which carries some or al ...
of any sort, WICA-TV had limited broadcast hours, a sparse and often overused film library, and a heavy amount of local programming (usually filmed with only one camera). WICA-TV started broadcasting on September 19, 1953, but quietly signed off around June 21, 1956.
The Rowley family then reactivated WICA-TV on April 4, 1966, with an intent of donating it as a non-profit educational license. As was in its first incarnation, WICA-TV was again hampered with no network programming, an often overused and limited film library of mediocre and low rental fare. In addition, WICA-TV still broadcast only in black-and-white when most stations already converted to color (
WQEX
WINP-TV (channel 16) is a television station in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States, airing programming from the Ion Television network. Owned and operated by Ion Media, the station maintains transmitter facilities in Pittsburgh's Oakland n ...
in Pittsburgh was the last licensed television station to convert in 1986.) and still filmed local programming with only one camera.
WICA-TV signed off for good on December 26, 1967, with its license returned to the FCC. The UHF antenna is the sole remaining element of WICA-TV's existence, still affixed to the north tower of the WFUN array.
References
External links
*
WICA-TV at the UHF Morgue
{{ESPN Ohio
FUN
Fun is defined by the ''Oxford English Dictionary'' as "Light-hearted pleasure, enjoyment, or amusement; boisterous joviality or merrymaking; entertainment".
Etymology and usage
The word ''fun'' is associated with sports, entertaining medi ...
News and talk radio stations in the United States
Ashtabula, Ohio