FOSTORIA | WFOB 1430: How Fostoria Got Its Own Radio Station

Author: FFP Ai Bot

A Seneca Radio Corporation advertisement for WFOB, 1950s

FOSTORIA — For more than 70 years, Fostoria has heard its own news, ball games and school closings at 1430 on the AM dial. The advertisement at the top of this story, from the station’s early years, shows three tall towers rising over a small studio building south of town, with a promise: “FIRST with Local and Area NEWS.”

This installment of our local history series tells how WFOB came to be. Our sources include a 1965 Bowling Green State University thesis on the station, a 1967 newspaper obituary of the banker who built it, federal licensing records and the station’s published history.

Quick timeline

FM first

Fostoria’s radio story starts on FM, years before most families owned an FM set. The station’s published history says WFOB-FM, today’s WBVI, had been on the air since 1946. A 1965 master’s thesis at Bowling Green State University, which studied WFOB and the Review-Times side by side, puts the start in 1947 and says the station operated “as an FM station until 1952, when it received its AM license.”

The man behind the AM station was Andrew Emerine Jr., longtime president of the First National Bank of Fostoria. According to his 1967 obituary in the Fostoria Review Times, his “radio career started in 1949 when he purchased the FM station operated by Lawrence Harry.” Under his guidance, the obituary says, it became WFOB-AM and FM.

On the air at 1430

WFOB AM signed on Dec. 9, 1952, from Kill Deer Hill, south of Fostoria on U.S. Route 23. Its later transmitter address, 1407 U.S. 23, also housed the studios and offices for many years. It was the third station serving the immediate area, 11 years after WFIN in Findlay, and at the time no AM station was serving Seneca or Wood counties.

The Seneca Radio Corporation ad captures the pitch. It calls WFOB “Northwestern Ohio’s Most Powerful Independent Station,” lists “AM 1430 kc — FM 96.7,” and promises 1,000 watts and “Unlimited Time,” meaning the station could broadcast day and night. Little owl logos carry the call letters. Federal records with the Federal Communications Commission still list WFOB at 1430 kHz in Fostoria with 1,000 watts.

The full WFOB advertisement, Seneca Radio Corporation, 1950s

What Fostoria was listening to

The Review-Times listed the big stations from Detroit, Toledo and Windsor that Fostoria listeners could pick up. “Radio Programs” box below shows a typical Tuesday night: news and Lowell Thomas on WJR, “One Man’s Family” and Red Skelton on WSPD, “Dr. Kildare” and “Black Museum” on CKLW. Toledo’s WSPD-TV offered Groucho Marx, Dinah Shore and “Ozzie & Harriet.”

At the bottom, under “WFOB – FM,” the hometown station’s day ran from news at 6 a.m. through “Waltz Time,” “Polka Patterns,” “Club 96” and “Music for Dining.” The listing shows only the FM station, which suggests it ran before the AM station signed on in December 1952.

A Review-Times radio and television listing, early 1950s

One station, one paper

By 1964, the Bowling Green State University thesis described a city of about 16,000 with one radio station, WFOB, and one newspaper, the Review-Times, both “solid and well-established institutions in the community.”

Seneca Radio Corporation sold WFOB and its FM sister station in 1986 to Tri-County Broadcasting, also known as TCB Holdings, whose chairman also led Fostoria’s Roppe Corporation. Under TCB the studios moved downtown to 101 N. Main St. by 1990, and a second studio opened in Bowling Green. When a Michigan station on the same frequency went silent in 1989, WFOB’s signal suddenly carried much farther. WFOB was also an early adopter of AM stereo, which it dropped in 2005.

On Sept. 1, 2008, WFOB dropped music for ESPN Radio, kept its local news and high school sports, and after a few years with other sports networks returned to ESPN in 2015. Today it is also heard on FM translator 105.7.

Do you remember a favorite WFOB voice or program? We would like to hear from you.

More from FFP: Looking Back at the Memories of Fostoria’s Field School and Fostoria: Time for a Train Drop on New Year’s Eve.

Photo note: Photographs and images published before 1931 are in the public domain in the United States. Historical images in this article are shared for educational and historical purposes.

Sources

• Jan W. Kolehmainen, A Comparative Survey of Certain Specific Roles of Radio Station WFOB and the Newspaper, the Review-Times, in Fostoria, Ohio (M.A. thesis, Bowling Green State University, 1965): https://etd.ohiolink.edu/acprod/odb_etd/ws/send_file/send?accession=bgsu1670603448494617&disposition=inline
• Andrew Emerine obituary, Fostoria Review Times, 1967 (Mechanical Bank Collectors of America scrapbook): http://www.mbca.com/scrapbook/1960s/pages/1967_emerine_claimed.htm
• Federal Communications Commission, AM Query, WFOB: https://transition.fcc.gov/fcc-bin/amq?call=WFOB
• FCC.report, WFOB license renewal BR-19790529UE, facility ID 67699: https://fcc.report/CDBS/10659
• Wikipedia, WFOB: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WFOB
• WFOB: https://wfob.com/