The station signed on the air in 1937 as WICA. WICA started an FM sister station, WICA-FM, on 103.7 MHz 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.. WREO would change its call sign to WFUN on July 3, 1978, taking the call letters of a legendary AM Top 40 station in Miami, Florida while eventually adopting an oldies format. The call letters WREO were retained by the sister FM station, which continues today with a Soft AC format. In May 2000 the Rowleys sold the stations and WZOO-FM to Clear Channel. WFUN's oldies format was dropped in February 2001 for a standard news/talk format, adding Dr. Laura, Jim Rome, Coast to Coast AM and Fox Sports Radio. 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 sold their Ashtabula cluster, including WFUN, in September 2007 to Media One Group. WFUN's programming changed on November 3, 2007 over to a sports/talk format affiliated with ESPN Radio, 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 due to WRIE taking the CBS Sports Radio affiliation.
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 UHF dial, and with no network affiliation of any sort, WICA-TV had limited broadcast hours, a sparse and often overused film library, and a heavy amount of local programming. 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 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 WREO-FM tower.
