THE QUEENS NEW YORKER EPISODE 219: THE HISTORY OF WEPN 1050AM

WEPN (1050 kHz) is an all-sports AM radio station licensed to New York, New York. The station is owned-and-operated by Good Karma Brands 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 largely become a passthrough for the national ESPN Radio lineup (including programs not cleared by WEPN-FM) and overflow play-by-play rights, including most New York Islanders games, and some New York Rangers games. PICTURE:  https://goodkarmabrands.com/espn-new-york/