WEPN (1050 kHz) is a sports radio station licensed to New York, New York. The station is owned-and-operated by Good Karma Sports and its transmitter site is located in North Bergen, New Jersey.
The 1050 AM facility in New York signed on in 1922 as WHN. For the majority of its existence under these call letters, as well as during its 14-year stint as WMGM, the station broadcast several different music-based formats, finally assuming a country music format in 1973. In 1987, WHN dropped its country format to become the first radio station dedicated entirely to sports programming, changing its call letters to WFAN. A series of transactions in the late 1980s resulted in WFAN's format and call letters moving in October 1988 to 660 AM (on which WFAN has continued to broadcast since), with the brokered programming format and call letters of The Forward-owned WEVD (previously on 97.9 FM) being moved to 1050 AM in February 1989. In 2001, The Walt Disney Company took control of the station (later buying it and renaming it to WEPN in 2003) and transformed it into a full-time affiliate of its ESPN Radio network. In 2012, WEPN became an affiliate of the Spanish-language ESPN Deportes Radio network, reverting to broadcasting the English-language ESPN Radio upon ESPN Deportes Radio's shutdown in 2019.
Since its return to ESPN Radio programming in 2019, the station has aired the national ESPN Radio lineup in its entirety, including programs not cleared by WHSQ (880 AM) or, prior to August 2024, WEPN-FM (98.7). WEPN also carries Buffalo Bills games, and overflow play-by-play rights, including most New York Islanders games, and some New York Rangers games.
History The 1050 frequency has a long history prior to this format. Starting in the 1920s as WHN, its programming was a standard mix of music, news, weather and drama. It was renamed WMGM in the late 1940s, continuing the same format until a switch to rock & roll in the late 1950s and early 1960s. As WHN again, it played adult standards in the 1960s and country music in the 1970s and 1980s (the format it was best known for). In the late 1980s as WFAN, it was the original frequency for the very successful first of its kind all-sports station. Then began a truly convoluted set of ownership, call sign, and format changes from the Spanish language WUKQ to WEVD, a brokered station in the 1990s, to today's incarnation as WEPN.
WHN (1922–1948) Originally owned by the Ridgewood Times newspaper, WHN was one of the first radio stations in New York City, going on the air on March 18, 1922, at AM frequency 833 kilocycles. The station's schedule was not originally published in its owner's radio page. The first mention of the station in the press may have been in the Brooklyn Eagle of April 9, 1922, with the following schedule: 9-11 a.m., Hour For Women; 12:15 p.m., Lunch Hour Gossip; 3:15, Afternoon Tea Discussion; 4:15, Radio Gossip For Amateurs, Boy Scout News.Brooklyn Eagle, April 9, 1922, pg 2C The "Radio Gossip" appears to have been instructions on how to build or operate a radio set by E.H. Lewis of the New York YMCA Radio School. Before the end of April, WHN had added a two-hour Sunday afternoon program of religious music and a brief sermon, and augmented its Monday through Saturday programming with a talk on real estate at 6:15 p.m., and a children's bedtime story by James Baldwin at 7:15, followed by jazz or another talk.Brooklyn Eagle, April 23, 1922, pg. 2C
The station was sharing 360 meters with WJZ, WWZ and WOR.
In March 1924, the station was sued in a test case by AT&T, for failure to pay for its use of AT&T's radio patents.Doerksen, Clifford J. (2011). American Babel: Rogue Radio Broadcasters of the Jazz Age. University of Pennsylvania Press. Chapter 2. Retrieved August 21, 2018.Jaker, Bill; Sulek, Frank; Kanze, Peter (2008). The Airwaves of New York: Illustrated Histories of 156 AM Stations in the Metropolitan Area, 1921–1996. McFarland & Company. p. 83-88. Retrieved August 21, 2018. Although AT&T denied rising public opinion that it was attempting to monopolize commercial broadcasting,"Bell System Denies 'Monopoly of Air'", Washington (D.C.) Evening Star, March 7, 1924, page 35. it began to fear an antitrust investigation. In addition, WHN's defense was seen as weak, so the two parties agreed to settle out-of-court, which was reported as:
According to the stipulations of the settlement, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company released WHN from all liability for past infringement of its patents. WHN paid $2,000 for a personal, non-transferable license to do general telephonic broadcasting, including for toll or hire, for the entire term of the patents. If at any time the power of WHN should be increased, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company will grant a new license on similar terms and for a proportionally larger fee." Letter from George E. Folk , General Patent Attorney of Bell Telephone dated August 1, 1924", Economics of the Radio Industry by Hiram L. Jome, 1925, footnote #2, page 215.
This settlement established a standard rate for a commercial license to use AT&T's radio patents, based on a station's transmitter power, set at $4 per kilowatt, although non-commercial stations were only charged $1.
The station played jazz and contemporary dance music, including Sophie Tucker, Fletcher Henderson, and Duke Ellington, as well as broadcasting Columbia University football games. In 1928, the station was bought by the Loew's Theatre Organization. During the 1920s, the station's frequency changed to 830, 760, and then 1010.History Cards for WEPN, fcc.gov. Retrieved August 21, 2018. In the 1930s, it broadcast the Major Bowes Amateur Hour, which was picked up by the CBS Radio Network.
In 1933, WHN became a full-time station when it acquired the licenses of WRNY and WQAO-WPAP with approval by the Federal Radio Commission on January 31 and February 3, respectively.
In 1938, WHN hosted a show called Whiz Kids.
WHN made its final frequency change to 1050 in 1941. During the 1940s, the programs Radio Newsreel and Newsreel Theater were prototypes for what later became the all-news radio format. The station broadcast Brooklyn Dodgers games with Red Barber as well as the New York Giants and New York Rangers with Marty Glickman.
In 1946, the station hired Eddie Cantor's daughter Marilyn as one of the earliest female disc jockeys. She hosted a program for children.
WMGM (1948–1962) On September 15, 1948, the station changed its call letters to WMGM, reflecting Loew's then-ownership of movie studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The station had a diversified format that included pop standard hits, drama, talk, and sports, and briefly featured New York talk host Barry Gray.
In May 1956, the station switched to playing Top 40 rock and roll hits, which covered a broad spectrum of music. The '50s brand of Top 40 played by WMGM and its competitors included what might today be considered rhythm and blues and country music, in addition to popular instrumentals (Percy Faith's 1960 "Theme from A Summer Place" and Acker Bilk's 1962 "Stranger on the Shore" hit the top of the charts during this era). WMGM was overall more up-tempo than the competition, featuring artists like Elvis Presley, Fats Domino, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, Frankie Lymon, the Crystals, the Tokens, Ray Charles, Dinah Washington, Brook Benton, Ricky Nelson, and Bill Haley. Its playlists were narrower and more predictable than those of mainstream MOR stations. WMGM's disc jockey lineup included morning man Ted Brown and the Redhead, Ted's then-wife Rhoda, Jerry Marshall, Peter Tripp, Norm Stevens, Dick Shepherd, Bob Lewis, Ed Stokes and Bob Callen. Among its newsreaders were Bill Edmunds, Dick DeFrietas and Aime Govin. During its Top 40 incarnation, WMGM was for a time home to New York Yankees baseball with Mel Allen, Red Barber and Phil Rizzuto. Ex-athletes Marty Glickman and Gussie Moran worked Yankees pre- and post-game shows from the studio.
WMGM had a theme song incorporating the names of many of its DJs in the 1960s. The words were:
He was a US Marshal and Jerry was his name. So they called him Jerry Marshall and widespread was his fame. He went to catch the outlaws, Bob Callen and Ted Brown Who were roping old Dick Shephard's sheep and herding them to town. Sing a song about Western hero men will never ride the range again. They're on 1050 WMGM.
By 1962, with WINS, WABC, and WMCA also playing predominantly rock and roll music, WMGM was sold by Loew's to Storer Communications, which owned mostly TV stations, but also owned WIBG, a rock and roll radio station less than away in Philadelphia.
WHN again (1962–1987)
Storer immediately dropped Top 40 for slow-paced standards and beautiful music, the province of much of FM radio at the time. The station was renamed WHN again on February 28, 1962, with special permission of the FCC. Three-letter call sign sets are a rarity and have not been issued to broadcast stations since the early 1930s.
Through the 1960s, WHN became New York City's Mutual Broadcasting System affiliate. On-air hosts included Jim Ameche, and early on, the comedy team of Bob Elliot and Ray Goulding (Bob and Ray). (Morning host Ted Brown remained with WHN for only a short time of transition, heading eventually to MOR WNEW. The station played vocalists such as Nat King Cole, Perry Como, Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Peggy Lee, Patti Page, and Johnny Mathis, plus a heavy dose of instrumentalist groups, notably Percy Faith, Al Hirt, Ray Conniff, and Henry Mancini. The station was about 75% vocal and 25% instrumental. Ratings were respectable, but the demographic was older by a generation or two.
In 1968, WHN gradually began mixing in softer songs by artists like Elvis Presley, The Everly Brothers, The Beatles, The Association, and others with their easy listening format. Still, the ratings were below average. By 1970, the station had evolved into more of a MOR format and less of an easy listening format and by 1972 evolved into more of an adult contemporary format similar to what WNEW was then doing.
WHN picked up New York Mets baseball for 1964 (with announcers Lindsey Nelson, Bob Murphy, and Ralph Kiner), after the team's original NYC flagship, WABC 770, dropped the rights, broadcasting through the 1966 season, with the Mets later returning to their airwaves from 1972 through 1974. The station also became a launching pad for the radio sports broadcasting career of Marv Albert, who hosted the "Interwoven Scoreboard" after Mets games and later on reintroduced New York fans to the Knicks and Rangers on radio. Initially, Rangers games were broadcast in small doses: the last two minutes of the first and second periods, then the entire third period. The entire metropolitan area enjoyed Red Holzman's miracle 1969–70 Knicks championship run, much of which was blacked out on TV.
Overall though, WHN's ratings were still low. After a lot of research, on February 26, 1973, WHN became a country music station. The New York Metropolitan Area had never been a country music hot spot, and prior to WHN, the area had only had two country music stations: WJRZ in Hackensack, New Jersey, and WTHE in Mineola, New York. In the early years of WHN's country format, it featured on-air personalities such as Larry Kenney, Big Wilson and Jack Spector. Some of these were holdovers from the previous middle of the road format.
As a country music station, they played artists like Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Tanya Tucker, Lynn Anderson, Kenny Rogers, Mel Tillis, Charley Pride, Mickey Gilley, Ronnie Milsap, and many more. Also, they mixed in non-country and country-pop cross-over artists that had country-friendly songs such as The Eagles, Elvis Presley, Anne Murray, Olivia Newton-John, Linda Ronstadt, and others. Over the years, as WHN evolved as a country station, on-air personalities such as Dan Daniel, Alan Colmes, Jerry Carroll and others moved in.