Sports Radio 66 WFAN in New York celebrates its 25th anniversary this weekend. On 7/1/1987 radio station WHN 1050 AM transformed from a country music station which held the rights to the reigning World Series champion New York Mets into a 24x7 sports format. WFAN later moved to 660 on the AM dial and remains the radio flagship of the Mets.
Over its 25 years, WFAN has held rights to other sports teams in the NYC market and featured many unique radio personalities including Mike Francesa and Christopher Russo who teamed up for 19 years as Mike and the Mad Dog in the afternoon drive slot. The success of WFAN led to a plethora of all-sports formats in markets across the country.
I was one of the listeners on that inaugural day and remember Jim Lampley hosting the first show.
Here is the original WFAN 1987 weekday schedule of hosts:
6 am - 10 am: Greg Gumbel
10 am - 1 pm: Jim Lampley
1 pm - 3 pm: Art Shamsky
3 pm - 7 pm: Pete Franklin
7 pm - midnight: Howie Rose
midnight - 6 am: Steve Somers
Note: Franklin was recovering from a heart attack when WFAN launched so the station rotated a number of fill-in hosts in the afternoon drive slot until Franklin was healthy enough to take over.
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