WRRN (92.3 FM) is a

radio station Radio broadcasting is transmission of audio (sound), sometimes with related metadata, by radio waves to radio receivers belonging to a public audience. In terrestrial radio broadcasting the radio waves are broadcast by a land-based radio ...

broadcasting a

classic hits Classic hits is a radio format which generally includes songs from the top 40 music charts from the late 1960s to the early 2000s, with music from the 1980s serving as the core of the format. Music that was popularized by MTV in the early 1980s ...

format. Licensed to

Warren, Pennsylvania Warren is a city in Warren County, Pennsylvania, United States, located along the Allegheny River. The population was 9,404 at the 2020 census. It is the county seat of Warren County. It is home to the headquarters of the Allegheny National Forest ...

, United States, the station is currently owned by

Lilly Broadcasting Lilly Broadcasting, LLC is a privately owned American broadcasting company owned and operated by the Lilly Brothers’ Brian Lilly and Kevin Lilly. The company was founded in September 1999 with the purchase of WENY-TV (ABC) and WENY-FM & AM ra ...

and features programming from

ABC News Radio ABC News Radio is the news radio service of ABC Audio, a division of ABC News in the United States. Formerly known as ABC Radio News, ABC News Radio feeds, through Skyview Networks, five minute newscasts on the hour and news briefs at half-pas ...

and Westwood One's "Greatest Hits" format.

History

WRRN signed on the air April 22, 1948, as WNAE-FM on 92.1 MHz. The station was started by the Northern Allegheny Broadcasting Company, under the ownership of president and general manager David Potter. It was the sister station of WNAE, an AM station that had signed on after

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

had ended, and the

Federal Communications Commission The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that regulates communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable across the United States. The FCC maintains jurisdiction ...

(FCC) began to issue licenses to radio stations. The licensing process had been halted once the U.S. had entered the war. W. LeRoy Schneck was program director and would one day assume control of both stations. WNAE-FM first signed on the air with an effective radiated power of 3,000 watts. In 1951, it changed its call letters to WRRN and moved to 92.3. By the 1970s, the station would increase its power to 26,000 watts and then to 50,000 by the 1980s. The station would periodically simulcast with WNAE at varying times, as WNAE was a daytime-only station until the late 1980s. In 1974, WNAE and WRRN were sold by Northern Allegheny Broadcasting to Kinzua Broadcasting Company, a company formed by longtime program director W. LeRoy Schneck, who now served as company president and station General Manager. Dave Whipple assumed Schneck's programming duties. For many years, WRRN was a

beautiful music Beautiful music (sometimes abbreviated as BM, B/EZ or BM/EZ for "beautiful music/easy listening") is a mostly instrumental music format that was prominent in North American radio from the late 1950s through the 1980s. Easy listening, elevator musi ...

radio station branded as "Easy 92.3". Like many other such formatted radio stations, WRRN played 10-inch reel-to-reel music tapes from a dedicated automation playback system, with the occasional news brief from AP Network News and local news from WNAE's newsroom. While operating as an

easy listening Easy listening (including mood music) is a popular music genre and radio format that was most popular during the 1950s to 1970s. It is related to middle-of-the-road (MOR) music and encompasses instrumental recordings of standards, hit songs, n ...

station, WRRN simulcast WNAE's morning show from 6 to 9 am Monday through Friday. Though music formats at times varied for WNAE over the years, music played during the simulcast was more

soft rock Soft rock is a form of rock music that originated in the late 1960s in Southern California and the United Kingdom which smoothed over the edges of singer-songwriter and pop rock, relying on simple, melodic songs with big, lush productions. S ...

-oriented to better buffer the easy listening format once the simulcast had ended for the day. In 2002, the station changed its format to

oldies Oldies is a term for musical genres such as pop music, rock and roll, doo-wop, surf music (broadly characterized as classic rock and pop rock) from the second half of the 20th century, specifically from around the mid-1950s to the 1980s, as we ...

, then transitioned to classic hits in August 2014. On September 30, 2005, Kibco Radio sold WRRN and its two sister stations to Radio Partners, LLC, which owned

WBVP WBVP (1230 AM) and WMBA (1460 AM) are commercial radio stations based in Beaver County, Pennsylvania. The stations simulcast a news/talk radio format. The stations are owned by St. Barnabas Broadcasting, a division of the Saint Barnabas Hea ...

and

WMBA A Master of Business Administration (MBA; also Master's in Business Administration) is a postgraduate degree focused on business administration. The core courses in an MBA program cover various areas of business administration such as accounti ...

in Beaver Falls and Ambridge, Pennsylvania, respectively. Radio Partners LLC President Frank Iorio retained W. LeRoy Schneck as general manager for a period to assist with the transfer of ownership. In 2019, after a failed attempt to sell the stations to Laurel Media two years prior, Radio Partners, LLC sold WRRN, along with its sister stations WKNB and WNAE, to

, which operates

WICU-TV WICU-TV (channel 12) is a television station in Erie, Pennsylvania, United States, affiliated with NBC. It is owned by SJL Broadcasting, which maintains a local marketing agreement (LMA) with Lilly Broadcasting, owner of CBS/The CW Plus, CW+ aff ...

and

WSEE-TV WSEE-TV (channel 35) is a television station in Erie, Pennsylvania, United States, affiliated with CBS and The CW Plus. It is the flagship television property of locally based Lilly Broadcasting, and is a sister station to NBC affiliate WICU-TV ...

Erie, Pennsylvania Erie (; ) is a city on the south shore of Lake Erie and the county seat of Erie County, Pennsylvania, United States. Erie is the fifth largest city in Pennsylvania and the largest city in Northwestern Pennsylvania with a population of 94,831 a ...

, for $900,000.

References

External links

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* {{Classic Hits Radio Stations in New York RRN Warren County, Pennsylvania 1948 establishments in Pennsylvania Radio stations established in 1948