WEOL

WEOL (930 AM) – branded AM 930 WEOL – is a commercial news/talk radio station licensed to Elyria, Ohio, serving the western parts of Greater Cleveland, including Lorain and Medina counties. Owned by Elyria-Lorain Broadcasting Co., WEOL is the local affiliate for The Dave Ramsey Show; The Sean Hannity Show; syndicated personalities Clark Howard and Jim Bohannon; Fox Sports Radio; ABC Radio; and the Wall Street Journal Radio Network. WEOL also serves as a local affiliate for the Cleveland Indians, Cleveland Cavaliers, Columbus Blue Jackets, and Ohio State radio networks. The WEOL studios are located in Elyria, while the station transmitter resides in nearby Grafton. In addition to a standard analog transmission, WEOL is available online.

History

WEOL signed on on October 17, 1948 at both 930 kHz and 107.3 MHz, in Elyria, Ohio with studios in the Elyria Savings and Trust Building in downtown Elyria. The FM installations, like most of the era, were established as an adjunct to the AM programming. Both stations were owned by the newly created Elyria-Lorain Broadcasting Co. The station's early years were spent fighting for its very survival. In the 1930s and 1940s, the Lorain Journal (today known as The Morning Journal) enjoyed a monopoly in news coverage and advertising revenue in Lorain. With the establishment of WEOL, however, the Journal feared the presence of this new competitor. In response, the Journal unofficially instituted an "exclusivity policy" that prevented Journal advertisers from doing business with WEOL. WEOL's owners sued Journal Publishing, and it went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. In the 1951 decision Lorain Journal Co. v. United States, 343 U.S. 143, it was found that the Journal violated key provisions of the Sherman Antitrust Act by seeking to maintain their near monopoly on advertising revenue. In addition, the Journal was found to have acted in a "predatory" and illegal manner.