WAKR (1590 AM, "Soft Hits 93.5 FM") is a commercial radio station licensed to Akron, Ohio, United States, serving the Akron metropolitan area including Summit and Portage County. Owned by Rubber City Radio Group, Inc., the station features a full-service and classic hits format. WAKR's studios are located in Akron's Wallhaven neighborhood, while the transmitter is sited in the city's southeast side. In addition to a standard analog transmission, WAKR is relayed over low-power Akron translator W228EL () and available online.
Neither the first or oldest surviving radio station in Akron, WAKR has had the most measured historical impact of any broadcast outlet in the city, especially during its first 50 years. WAKR was signed on by electronics dealer, lawyer, and inventor S. Bernard Berk on October 16, 1940, after a three-year application process and protests from two competing radio stations. An affiliate of Blue Network/ABC Radio with substantial local programming, WAKR's ratings dominated the market in the 1940s and 1950s, frequently outperforming Blue/ABC affiliates across the country. Regarded as a "talent school", WAKR employed multiple announcers who found greater success elsewhere, with Alan Freed, Scott Muni and Art Fleming the most famous of alumni. Freed's 1950 departure and attempted move to crosstown WADC, which Berk successfully blocked in court, was the first successful usage of the non-compete clause in the broadcast industry. Berk applied for a television license before a regulatory freeze placed what became WAKR-TV on the UHF band, with WAKR's profits frequently sustaining the TV station. The Knight Newspapers chain, publishers of the Akron Beacon Journal, held a minority stake in Berk's Summit Radio (d/b/a Group One Broadcasting) for nearly 30 years.
The station, and FM adjunct WONE-FM, remained in the hands of the Berk family until 1986, when it was sold to DKM Broadcasting; DKM merged into cable system operator Summit Communications Group the following year. By 1990, U.S. Radio, a Black-operated company headed by Ragan Henry, purchased WAKR and WONE-FM. Despite the continued popularity of top-rated morning show hosts Adam Jones and Bob Allen, WAKR's dominance gradually eroded throughout the 1980s due to stiffer competition from FM stations and staffing cutbacks, and resulted in a format switch to talk radio by May 1991. Rubber City Radio Group, organized by WQMX owner Thom Mandel, acquired both stations in 1993 and has owned all three into the present day.
WAKR's format has changed multiple times under Rubber City ownership, beginning with a switch to adult standards in 1994, a second iteration of talk radio in 1997, and a return to standards in 1999 but largely sourced from Westwood One's "AM Only" satellite service. The station segued to oldies in 2006, again to talk radio in 2014, and to classic hits in 2020. In addition to carrying local news reports and top-of-the-hour newscasts from ABC News Radio, WAKR is the Akron affiliate for the Cleveland Browns and Cleveland Guardians radio networks, as well as the Ohio State Sports Network.
History A third voice for Akron
S. Bernard Berk, a practicing attorney and electrical appliance store operator in Akron, first filed paperwork with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on January 6, 1937, to establish a third radio station for the city, after WADC and WJW (); WTAM in Cleveland also serviced Akron with its transmitter site in Brecksville, north of the city. In addition to his law practice and business, Berk also had experience as an inventor. He held a patent for an early photoelectric cell that automatically dimmed automobile headlights for oncoming traffic at night, and also designed a five-speaker public address system for Western Electric.
Akron Beacon Journal publisher John S. Knight publicly showed skepticism in his column that the commission would even grant the permit, and could not justify the need for a third station. Both WJW and WADC objected to the establishment of another radio station in Akron, as did KXBY in Kansas City, Missouri; despite those objections, John T. Brambill, an FCC examiner, recommended that the permit be granted. The FCC, however, reversed that examiner's ruling on May 11, 1938, citing that there was "no lack of radio broadcast facilities and service in Akron, Ohio" and that Berk's party did not propose "a program of research and experimentation" to the development of high-fidelity broadcasting. Berk appealed the decision, claiming that the commission ignored testimony from Akron officials and leaders desiring a third station, and after securing statements of support from 34 different civic, religious and community organizations in the city, the FCC reversed itself on August 8, 1939, granting the permit.
WJW and WADC filed protests against the ruling and requested a rehearing, along with two other stations that operated on the proposed frequency: KITE (the former KXBY) and WBRY in Waterbury, Connecticut. KITE and WBRY objected on engineering grounds and would later withdraw their protests, while WJW and WADC objected on economic grounds. At a final review set forth by the commission on October 25, 1939, WJW's counsel stated that the station either made profits of less than $900 a year or had been operating at a loss since 1936, having paid out most of their income on employee salaries. After the proceedings, sources close to the FCC told the Beacon Journal that the commission had been changing its focus to awarding permits unless there was an engineering issue and was no longer taking economic arguments into account.
Following this final review, Berk was awarded federal authorization to construct WAKR on January 10, 1940, under his family-owned business Summit Radio Corp. Studios were set up on the ground floor of the First Central Tower in downtown Akron—now known as the Huntington Tower—and WAKR signed up to be an affiliate of NBC's Blue Network and Thesaurus radio transcription service upon launch. Due to WAKR's frequency having been recently included for use for broadcast purposes, Berk's radio appliance store offered free of charge to change the tuning devices on any radios that did not go up to . After being formally granted the license on October 16, 1940, WAKR took to the air that evening with a grand opening ceremony emceed by Milton Cross, host of the NBC Blue game show Information Please, along with NBC Blue's Metropolitan Opera radio broadcasts.
Initially on with , WAKR was moved to on March 28, 1941, as a result of the North American Regional Broadcasting Agreement, and had power output raised to the following December. S. Bernard Berk's son, Roger G. Berk, had his first job in the medium digging post holes at WAKR's transmitter site in the city's southeast side; the site remains in active use today.
Market dominance
While WADC had an advantage of being a CBS Radio Network affiliate, WAKR built its reputation primarily through local programming alongside NBC Blue (renamed the Blue Network in 1943, then again as ABC Radio in 1945) offerings. WAKR has been often regarded as being one of the first radio stations in the United States to have established an active news department when it signed on, augmenting coverage from United Press and the Associated Press. During WAKR's peak in the mid-1940s, C. E. Hooper ratings showed the station with as much as 55 percent of the Akron audience in mornings and 30 percent of the audience in afternoons; even local ratings for Don McNeill's Breakfast Club outperformed comparable ABC Radio affiliates by significant margins. WAKR took out multiple full-page advertisements in Broadcasting throughout 1945 and 1946 boasting of their ratings dominance, calling themselves "Tops in Akron" (also a play on the frequency being at the "top" of the medium wave band).
Along with the highly rated weekday programming, WAKR also offered multiple specialty programs. One of the longer running programs was the children-oriented Tip Top Tales, hosted by librarian Harriet Leaf, which aired from 1940 to 1957. A local version of the Blue/ABC program America's Town Meeting of the Air ran on WAKR that was aimed at the teenage and young adult audience, championed by S. Bernard Berk's wife, Viola Berk. Starting on January 13, 1945, WAKR broadcast weekly productions from Kent State University's Radio Workshop on Saturday mornings; this continued until 1950 when the university established WKSU-FM.
The "WAKR Talent School" Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, WAKR became famous in the industry as being a "stepping stone" for up-and-coming announcers, actors, and television presenters, in what would be informally known as the "WAKR Talent School" under S. Bernard Berk's guidance. Future Peter Gunn co-star Lola Albright joined WAKR after graduating from high school as a receptionist before finding additional work at WTAM in Cleveland. Peter Hackes worked as a newsman at WAKR in the late 1940s before going to CBS News and NBC News, later making notable cameos in the films Broadcast News and True Colors.
Shortly after signing on, the station hired a young announcer named Stephen Richards, who did announcing, acting, and engineering work, and broke the news of the Attack on Pearl Harbor on-air. After leaving WAKR for a brief stint at WJW, Richards starred in the Weathervane Playhouse stage production Yes and No before moving to Los Angeles, a chance meeting with two Hollywood press agents prompted him to go to the Warner Bros. Burbank studios. A 1944 promotional booklet issued by the studio promoting new talent signings said of Richards, "Walked into Warner Brothers studio. Asked for a job. Got it." Assuming the stage name Mark Stevens, his first theatrical appearance was a bit role in Passage to Marseille, and went to appear in over eighty feature films and forty different television programs.
Art Fazzin was hired as Top O' the Morning host in January 1949, having worked previously at radio stations in North Carolina. In addition to mornings, Fazzin provided color commentary for Akron Zips football games, announced Soap Box Derby finals for the station, and hosted various other daytime programs. Fazzin left the station on January 11, 1952, to pursue freelance work in New York City, leading Beacon Journal writer Art Cullison to predict, "don't be surprised if you see his face on some network video programs." Using his middle name for the stage name Art Fleming, Fazzin became best known as the first host of the television game show Jeopardy!
Perhaps WAKR's most famous personality in this era was Alan Freed, who joined WAKR in June 1945 at the age of 23 after previous work in Youngstown and New Castle, Pennsylvania. Known on-air as "The Old Knuclehead", Freed quickly became a local favorite at the station, hosting a nightly popular music program, Request Review, and an afternoon program, Jukebox Serenade. Freed also hosted a daytime program aimed at the bobby soxer audience early on at WAKR; when that was dropped from the lineup, the station added an evening show hosted by Freed titled Wax Works. The station also launched a phone participation contest program hosted by Freed in 1948, entitled Hello, Cinderella. After an ABC Radio program hosted by Paul Whiteman was cancelled, WAKR declined to pick up a replacement program offered by ABC and Freed's daytime show was reinstated, giving him over five hours of airtime every day. Even with his popularity, Freed was reportedly fired temporarily in 1948 for violating studio rules, later accounts suggested it was due to his failure to show up for several days in a row.