In 1987, WHN dropped its country format to become the first radio station dedicated entirely to sports programming, changing its call letters to WFAN.

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.

Then began a truly convoluted set of ownership, call sign, and format changes from the Spanish language WUKQ to WEVD, a brokered station in the 1990s, to today's incarnation as WEPN.

Originally owned by the Ridgewood Times newspaper, WHN was one of the first radio stations in New York City, going on the air on March 18, 1922, at AM frequency 833 kilocycles.

[5] The station played jazz and contemporary dance music,[2] including Sophie Tucker, Fletcher Henderson, and Duke Ellington, as well as broadcasting Columbia University football games.

[2] In 1933, WHN became a full-time station when it acquired the licenses of WRNY and WQAO-WPAP with approval by the Federal Radio Commission on January 31 and February 3, respectively.

WMGM was overall more up-tempo than the competition, featuring artists like Elvis Presley, Fats Domino, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, Frankie Lymon, the Crystals, the Tokens, Ray Charles, Dinah Washington, Brook Benton, Ricky Nelson, and Bill Haley.

During its Top 40 incarnation, WMGM was for a time home to New York Yankees baseball with Mel Allen, Red Barber and Phil Rizzuto.

He went to catch the outlaws, Bob Callen and Ted Brown Who were roping old Dick Shephard's sheep and herding them to town.

Storer immediately dropped Top 40 for slow-paced standards and beautiful music, the province of much of FM radio at the time.

(Morning host Ted Brown remained with WHN for only a short time of transition, heading eventually to MOR WNEW.

The station played vocalists such as Nat King Cole, Perry Como, Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Peggy Lee, Patti Page, and Johnny Mathis, plus a heavy dose of instrumentalist groups, notably Percy Faith, Al Hirt, Ray Conniff, and Henry Mancini.

In 1968, WHN gradually began mixing in softer songs by artists like Elvis Presley, The Everly Brothers, The Beatles, The Association, and others with their easy listening format.

The entire metropolitan area enjoyed Red Holzman's miracle 1969–70 Knicks championship run, much of which was blacked out on TV.

In the early years of WHN's country format, it featured on-air personalities such as Larry Kenney, Big Wilson and Jack Spector.

As a country music station, they played artists like Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Tanya Tucker, Lynn Anderson, Kenny Rogers, Mel Tillis, Charley Pride, Mickey Gilley, Ronnie Milsap, and many more.

Also, they mixed in non-country and country-pop cross-over artists that had country-friendly songs such as The Eagles, Elvis Presley, Anne Murray, Olivia Newton-John, Linda Ronstadt, and others.

Over the years, as WHN evolved as a country station, on-air personalities such as Dan Daniel, Alan Colmes, Jerry Carroll and others moved in.

[13] The first voice heard on WFAN was that of Suzyn Waldman with a sports update at 3:00 pm,[14] followed by the first show, which was hosted by Jim Lampley.

Other personalities that hosted shows besides Lampley in the 1050 kHz years included Bill Mazer, Pete Franklin, Greg Gumbel and Ed Coleman.

In February of that year, GE made a multi-station deal with Emmis; in New York, the WNBC and WYNY licenses were included in the sale.

On September 22, 1988, Emmis ended up moving their Dance/R&B "Hot" format and call letters WQHT over to the 97.1 frequency (while selling the 103.5 facility and WYNY's intellectual property over to Westwood One; that station would later become WKTU in 1996), and then moved WFAN's format and call letters from 1050 to 660 on October 7, at 5:30 pm, replacing "66 WNBC", which signed off forever.

For the first few hours after the switch of WFAN to the 660 facility, WUKQ broadcast a recorded message which was continuously looped[15] stating: "This is WUKQ-AM New York, operating at 1050 Kilohertz.

Dating back to October 20, 1927, WEVD had been the radio station owned by the Workman's Circle (Arbeter Ring) in New York City.

Its call letters were a tribute to legendary Socialist Party leader Eugene Victor Debs, who died one year earlier.

The AM station was sold on March 2, 1981, for $1.1 million to Salem Communications, and changed the call letters to WNYM (now WWRV) while WEVD continued on the FM dial.

Talk hosts included Bill Mazer, former New York mayor Ed Koch, Jay Diamond, and Alan Colmes.

In 2001, WEVD entered into a local marketing agreement with ABC/Disney and added ESPN Radio's The Dan Patrick Show to the talk lineup.

During its final day on-air as "News-Talk 1050 WEVD", the outraged public campaign was subtly extended into the station's control room, as soon-to-be terminated staffers occasionally interrupted portions of the brokered programming with audio clips, some of which contained obscenities.

On April 26, 2012, Disney announced a 12-year lease of Emmis Communications' 98.7 WRKS, under which WEPN's programming would transition to FM, and the AM signal would be converted to a new Spanish-language sports format as part of the ESPN Deportes Radio network by mid-September 2012 (to coincide with National Hispanic Heritage Month).