WAXY

WAXY

City of license	South Miami, Florida
Broadcast area	Miami-Ft. Lauderdale, Florida
Branding	Sports Talk 790, The Ticket
Frequency	790 kHz
Format	Sports/Talk
Power	5,000 watts
Class	B
Facility ID	30837
Affiliations	ESPN Radio Westwood One Florida Panthers Miami Heat Miami Marlins
Owner	Lincoln Financial Media
Webcast	Listen Live
Website	790theticket.com

WAXY (790 AM, "The Ticket") is a radio station licensed in South Miami, Florida broadcasting on 790 kHz with a sports talk format. The station is owned by Lincoln Financial Media, which was previously known as Jefferson-Pilot Communications. Its studios are located near Sun Life Stadium in northern Dade County.

The callsign was formerly used on FM at 105.9 until Jefferson-Pilot acquired the callsign due to their competing station WMXJ Majic 102.7 having the same format, Oldies. 105.9 FM is now WBGG-FM and owned by Clear Channel with a Classic Rock format.

History

This station was once WFUN-AM, a legendary Top 40 station that competed with WQAM. Originally, the station was located at 800 on the AM dial, and was a daytime-only operation. While on 800, it was licensed to Miami Beach and was the first station in the area to hold the WMBM call letters, now on 1490 kHz. In the early 1960s, the station migrated down to 790, and went full-time as WFUN. The 790 dial position was a moderately directional signal, as there was already a 790 in Havana, Cuba, and another in central Florida (Leesburg-Eustis). Despite coverage limitations, especially to the southwest (in the Florida Keys, toward Havana), WFUN competed vigorously with WQAM throughout the '60s, and even won some of the ratings sweeps. During the early '70s, pop music showed up first on FM at WMYQ, and then on Y-100, and the field of top 40 stations (including WQAM and even WINZ for a brief time) became crowded; ultimately many listeners moved to FM for music, and consequently, in 1976, WFUN abandoned their top 40 format for an Adult Standards/MOR format. WFUN was used by one of its disc jockeys to create the revolutionary and hybrid Boss Radio broadcasting sound of Swinging Radio England from the coast of southern England during 1966. For a short time in 1965 Morton 'Doc' Downey was a DJ on this Miami legend station.

WFUN was the home of several D.J.s who became famous on both sides of the Atlantic in 1966. They included Ron O'Quinn and Larry Dean. The format of WFUN in Miami was used in part by Ron O'Quinn as the foundation for the hybrid mix of sounds that were heard over the 50,000 watts offshore pirate radio station Swinging Radio England between May and November 1966.

In 1978, the station became WNWS-AM with a news/talk format. Popular talk show host Tom Leykis was heard in the early 1980's. It changed back to music and became WMRZ-AM ("790 Memories") on November 28, 1990, running "AM Only", a Satellite-based Adult Standards format from the Unistar radio network (now America's Best Music from Dial Global).

WMRZ switched to a schedule of brokered programming in late 1993, and became WAXY-AM on October 12, 1994 after the original WAXY on FM abandoned those call letters airing an eclectic mix of shows from investments, sports, radio theater, religion as well as a mixed bag of music shows including hip hop, Cajun/zydeco, oldies and gospel.

Current format

Since 2004, WAXY has been an all-sports station. At one point, the station was branded as "ESPN Radio 790", but then stopped carrying ESPN Radio programs in favor of Fox Sports Radio, then carried the Sporting News Radio shows of Todd Wright and David Stein, and is now affiliated with ESPN Radio again, since WQAM took the Sporting News Radio affiliation.

The weekday lineup is mainly local, with hosts Jorge Sedano (mornings), The Herd with Colin Cowherd, Miami Heat television host and court side reporter Jason Jackson, Miami Herald sportswriter Dan LeBatard (afternoons). Miami Marlins baseball and Jonathan Zaslow in the evenings, and Phil Hendrie (late night). Zaslow, Brandon Guzio, Craig Mish, Josh Friedman, and Alex Donno are permanent fixtures on the weekends.

It also broadcast Super Bowl XLI from Westwood One. It was formerly the flagship station of the Miami Dolphins along with Majic 102.7 in 2005 and Big 105.9 in 2006.

The station is now the flagship station for the Miami Marlins after they were not renewed by WQAM-AM at the request of the Miami Dolphins WMCU 1080 currently is serving in this role for FIU Golden Panthers football and basketball conflicts with the Marlins.

During the 2010-11 season, WAXY took over as the Miami Heat's flagship station due to a dispute with previous station WINZ.^{[citation needed]}

WAXY also airs most of the national play-by-play schedule of ESPN Radio.

External links

• Sports Talk 790 The Ticket Website
• Query the FCC's AM station database for WAXY
• Radio-Locator Information on WAXY
• Query Arbitron's AM station database for WAXY