WNIO (1390 AM - branded 1390 The Gambler) — is an American

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 ...

Youngstown, Ohio Youngstown is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio, and the largest city and county seat of Mahoning County, Ohio, Mahoning County. At the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, Youngstown had a city population of 60,068. It is a principal city of ...

with a

sports talk Sports radio (or sports talk radio) is a radio format devoted entirely to discussion and broadcasting of sport, sporting events. A widespread programming genre that has a narrow audience appeal, sports radio is characterized by an often-low comedy ...

radio format A radio format or programming format (not to be confused with broadcast programming) describes the overall content broadcast on a radio station. The radio format emerged mainly in the United States in the 1950s, at a time when radio was compelle ...

, serving as the Youngstown affiliate for

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 ...

and VSiN Radio. WNIO also carries

Ohio State University The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best pu ...

football and

basketball Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular court, compete with the primary objective of shooting a basketball (approximately in diameter) through the defender's h ...

Pittsburgh Pirates The Pittsburgh Pirates are an American professional baseball team based in Pittsburgh. The Pirates compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the National League (NL) National League Central, Central division. Founded as part o ...

baseball,

Cleveland Cavaliers The Cleveland Cavaliers (often referred to as the Cavs) are an American professional basketball team based in Cleveland. The Cavaliers compete in the National Basketball Association (NBA) as a member of the league's Eastern Conference (NBA), Ea ...

basketball,

Pittsburgh Steelers The Pittsburgh Steelers are a professional American football team based in Pittsburgh. The Steelers compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the American Football Conference (AFC) North division. Founded in , the Stee ...

football, and the

Indianapolis 500 The Indianapolis 500, formally known as the Indianapolis 500-Mile Race, and commonly called the Indy 500, is an annual automobile race held at Indianapolis Motor Speedway (IMS) in Speedway, Indiana, United States, an enclave suburb of India ...

from the

Indianapolis Motor Speedway Radio Network The Indianapolis Motor Speedway Radio Network (known typically as the IMS Radio Network or the INDYCAR Radio Network), is an in-house radio syndication arrangement which broadcasts the Indianapolis 500, the NTT IndyCar Series, and Indy Lights to ...

History

The station was founded in 1939 as WFMJ by William F. Maag, Jr. from whose initials the call letters were derived. Maag was also publisher of '' The Youngstown Vindicator''. It was originally at 1420 kHz, and moved to 1450 kHz during the

NARBA The North American Regional Broadcasting Agreement (NARBA, es, Convenio Regional Norteamericano de Radiodifusión) refers to a series of international treaties that defined technical standards for AM band (mediumwave) radio stations. These agreem ...

frequency shift on March 29, 1941. It moved to its present location 1390 kHz during the mid-1940s. During the 1940s and early 1950s WFMJ was an affiliate of the Blue Network and its successor ABC. In 1948, Maag launched WFMJ-FM at 105.1 MHz; the FM station is now

WQXK WQXK (105.1 MHz, "K-105") is a commercial FM radio station, licensed to Salem, Ohio, and serving the Youngstown metropolitan area and the Mahoning Valley. It is one of eight radio stations in the Youngstown radio market owned by Cumulus Med ...

. On March 8, 1953, Maag started Youngstown's second television station

WFMJ-TV WFMJ-TV (channel 21) is a television station in Youngstown, Ohio, United States, affiliated with NBC and The CW. The station is locally owned by the Maag family. WFMJ-TV's studios are located on West Boardman Street in downtown Youngstown, and i ...

on channel 73. The television station moved to its present location, channel 21, on August 7, 1954. The AM station changed its callsign to WHOT on April 23, 1990, when it was sold by its original owners to the owner of

WHOT-FM WHOT-FM (101.1 MHz, "Hot 101") is a commercial radio station in Youngstown, Ohio. It airs a Top 40 (CHR) radio format. It is one of seven radio stations in the Youngstown market owned by Cumulus Media. It carries syndicated shows from Adam Bo ...

, and it used the historic call sign from the former Top 40 AM station that originally broadcast daytime only on 1570 kHz and later full-time on 1330 kHz. Four years later, it was sold to Connoisseur Communications, and it changed to WRTK on February 15, 1995, assuming a talk radio format as "Real Talk 1390." In order to obtain Justice Department approval to purchase

(FM) and WSOM (AM), Connoisseur was forced to sell WRTK as well as

WBBG WBBG (106.1 FM) is a commercial radio station in Youngstown, Ohio, market with a country music format. The station is licensed to Niles, Ohio. WBBG is also a local affiliate for the Ohio State Sports Network football games. The station first si ...

(FM). The stations were sold on February 23, 1998 to a subsidiary of Bain Gocom, the Boston venture capital company that was a major investor in WKBN-TV's former parent company. In a few months,

Jacor Communications Jacor Communications was a media corporation, existing between 1987 and 1999, which owned many radio stations in the United States. In 1998, Jacor was purchased by Clear Channel Communications, now iHeartMedia, for $2.8 billion. Jacor Communicat ...

entered into a LMA with Bain Gocom for all of their radio stations in Youngstown and New Castle, including WRTK and WBBG. Combined with Jacor's existing station holdings in the area - and a merger with Clear Channel months later - ten stations were under the same operational and management control in the New Castle/Youngstown region. The station became WNIO on November 1, 1999, after Clear Channel relocated WNIO's adult standards format and callsign from the daytime-only 1540 kHz facility in

Niles, Ohio Niles is a city in southern Trumbull County, Ohio, United States, situated at the confluence of the Mahoning River and Mosquito Creek. The city's population was 18,443 at the 2020 census. It is a suburb of the Youngstown–Warren metropolitan ...

(that station would assume the

WRTK WRTW is a Christian radio station licensed to Crown Point, Indiana, broadcasting on 90.5 MHz FM. It is owned by Hyles Anderson College. Its studios are located in the former federal courthouse and post office building on State Street in Dow ...

calls and would be spun off to different owners in early 2001). Clear Channel Communications purchased WNIO along with

WNCD WNCD is a commercial radio station serving Youngstown, Ohio, owned by iHeartMedia, Inc. and broadcasting a mainstream rock format at 93.3 MHz. Its signal covers Youngstown, Warren, and New Castle, PA, and at times even reaches Erie and New K ...

(which switched dial positions with WBBG in late 2000) and

WAKZ WAKZ (95.9 FM, "Real 95.9") is a radio station licensed to Sharpsville, Pennsylvania, and serving Youngstown, Ohio. The station is owned by iHeartMedia, Inc. The station airs a mainstream urban radio format. Prior to July 2, 2020, WAKZ broadcast ...

from Bain in 2005, after it had dropped its petition on January 14, 2004 to purchase those three stations along with WICT due to FCC objections, and also included Clear Channel selling off their station clusters in New Castle and Johnstown to Forever Broadcasting, LLC. From 2000 until 2010, WNIO also served as the flagship station for

Mahoning Valley Scrappers The Mahoning Valley Scrappers are a collegiate summer baseball team of the MLB Draft League. They are located in Niles, Ohio, a city in the valley of the Mahoning River, and play their home games at Eastwood Field. From 1999 to 2020, they were a ...

minor league

baseball Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each, taking turns batting and fielding. The game occurs over the course of several plays, with each play generally beginning when a player on the fielding ...

. In November 2010, Clear Channel announced that WNIO would drop its standards format in favor of

on December 27. The move will coincide with the displacement of the network from crosstown WANR 1570 AM in

Warren A warren is a network of wild rodent or lagomorph, typically rabbit burrows. Domestic warrens are artificial, enclosed establishment of animal husbandry dedicated to the raising of rabbits for meat and fur. The term evolved from the medieval Angl ...

, which switched back to its former

classic hits Classic hits is a radio format which generally includes songs from the top 40 music charts from the late 1960s to the early 2000s, with music from the 1980s serving as the core of the format. Music that was popularized by MTV in the early 198 ...

format under the moniker "The Blizzard." This is one of two Standards stations changing their format in the Youngstown region. Cumulus owned WSOM AM 600 has flipped to News Talk on December 13 of 2010. On September 7, 2020, WNIO rebranded as "1390 The Gambler", becoming the second iHeart sports station in Ohio to carry the "Gambler" name (after Cleveland market station

WARF WARF (1350 AM) is a commercial radio station licensed to Akron, Ohio, known as "Fox Sports 1350 The Gambler" and carrying a sports format. Owned by iHeartMedia, WARF serves the Greater Cleveland and Akron metro areas as an affiliate of Fox Spo ...

AM 1350). With the new branding, WNIO also added sports gambling oriented programming from the BetR Network, during the evenings. Fox Sports Radio however still comprises the bulk of the daily and weekend schedule.iHeart Brings The Gambler To Youngstown
Radioinsight - September 8, 2020

Former logos

References

External links

WFMJ Oral History, Transcript of interview of Bill Crooks
{{IHeartMedia NIO Sports radio stations in the United States IHeartMedia radio stations Radio stations established in 1939 1939 establishments in Ohio