On this day in New York · July 1, 1987
WFAN Signs On as the First All-Sports Station
At 3 p.m. on a July afternoon, a country music frequency on the dial went dark and came back as something nobody in radio had ever tried: sports, all day, every day.
The facts
- Launch date
- July 1, 1987, at 3:00 p.m.
- Original frequency
- 1050 AM
- Owner at launch
- Emmis Communications
- Format claim
- The world's first 24-hour-per-day sports talk station
WFAN launched on July 1, 1987, broadcasting on 1050 AM, the frequency long occupied by country station WHN. Owned by Emmis Communications, it billed itself as the world's first 24-hour sports talk station, a format nobody had proven could hold an audience around the clock. Suzyn Waldman delivered the first sports update on air, and the debut show was hosted by Jim Lampley. The station also inherited WHN's broadcast rights to the Mets, giving it an instant claim on New York's biggest sports conversation. WFAN would move to the stronger 660 AM signal a year later, but the bet placed that July afternoon, that New Yorkers would actually talk sports on the radio all day long, is the one that stuck.
In their words
The day in the words of the people who were there. Every quote is verbatim, and every source links out so you can check it.
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the world's first 24-hour-per-day sports talk station
Wikipedia, describing WFAN's format at its 1987 launch
Source: Wikipedia
Why it still matters
WFAN proved sports talk radio could run all day and made New York the template every other city's sports station copied afterward.
Sources
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