WTAM 1100 AM

One of the oldest continuously operating radio stations in the United States, this clear-channel AM outlet traces its origins to 1923, when it was founded by Willard Storage Battery Company and assigned call letters sequentially by the U.S. Department of Commerce. During the 1920s ownership passed through Cleveland Electric Illuminating and the Van Sweringen brothers before RCA acquired it in 1930, making it a flagship station in the NBC Radio Network. NBC sold the property to Westinghouse Broadcasting in 1956 as part of a swap involving Philadelphia stations, at which point the Cleveland signal took the KYW calls. That transaction was reversed in 1965 and all three Cleveland properties were rebranded as WKYC. Entrepreneur Nick Mileti purchased the station in 1972, operating it as WWWE with middle-of-the-road programming, sports play-by-play for the Cleveland Indians and Cavaliers, and Pete Franklin's influential Sportsline sports-talk program. A 1985 acquisition by a syndicate led by Art Modell and Al Lerner shifted the format to talk radio. Booth American, later Secret Communications, took over in 1990 and overhauled the lineup multiple times, hiring Mike Trivisonno as Sportsline host in 1994. The current call letters were restored in 1996 to re-emphasize the station's identity. Today it operates under iHeartMedia as the primary news and talk outlet for Greater Cleveland and a significant portion of Northeast Ohio, functioning as the region's main Emergency Alert System entry point.