WNCR (930 AM) is a non-commercial radio station licensed to Elyria, Ohio, United States. Owned by St. Peter the Rock Media, Inc, it features a Catholic–oriented religious format as a full-time simulcast of WCCR (), serving Lorain and Medina counties and the western parts of Greater Cleveland. The station's transmitter is in nearby Grafton; in addition to a standard analog transmission, WNCR simulcasts over low-power analog Elyria translator W262DM () and is available online.
This station signed on as WEOL in 1948 by the Elyria-Lorain Broadcasting Co. alongside FM adjunct WEOL-FM, featuring a full-service format oriented towards Lorain County with an emphasis on local news and sports. A court fight between WEOL and The Lorain Journal over the newspaper's retaliatory policies against advertisers in Lorain, Ohio, resulted in the 1951 U.S. Supreme Court decision Lorain Journal Co. v. United States, a treble damages lawsuit filed against the paper that took 15 years and two retrials to resolve, and two separate license renewal challenges filed by the Journal. From 1958 onward, the station was controlled by the publishers of the Elyria Chronicle-Telegram. Eliminating all music programming in late 1997 in favor of all-news and later talk radio, WEOL continued to feature various local shows and high school sports coverage until 2025, when the license was sold to St. Peter the Rock Media.
Application, construction and sign-on Organized on December 10, 1945, in Elyria, Ohio, the Elyria-Lorain Broadcasting Co. filed paperwork with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on April 24, 1946, to construct an AM station, one month after filing for an FM station permit. In addition to multiple area businessmen that included Bendix president David O. Thomas as chairman, the leading stockholder in Elyria-Lorain was Roy W. Ammel, vice-president of the Elyria Telephone Company since 1941; Ammel previous achieved fame as the first pilot to fly nonstop from New York City to the Panama Canal in 1930. The FM application, one of 11 filed in the Cleveland, Akron and Elyria area, was reviewed by the FCC beginning in April 1946, where Elyria-Lorain argued that Cleveland stations did not adequately cover Lorain County. The FM permit to broadcast at was granted on June 30, 1947, alongside the ten other applicants, and the AM permit to broadcast at was granted on September 11, 1947.
By April 1948, both stations adopted the WEOL and WEOL-FM call signs, standing for Wellington, Elyria, Oberlin and Lorain. Bert Koeblitz, associated with WHK for over 17 years, was hired as general manager. In addition to studios at the Elyria Savings and Trust Building in downtown Elyria and transmitter in Grafton Township, auxiliary studios were constructed at Oberlin College and the Antlers Hotel in Lorain, a combined investment of $250,000. Both WEOL and WEOL-FM took to the air at 7:30 a.m. on October 17, 1948, with minimal fanfare; the first program consisted of organ music, staff were introduced on-air at 2 p.m. that afternoon. Among the initial air staff was cooking program host Alice Schowalter, who joined WEWS-TV several months later under the stage name Alice Weston.
Four area churches, including two affiliated with the Assemblies of God, filed complaints with the FCC of religious discrimination after WEOL declined to carry an interdenominational program days before the stations signed on. Ammel countered that the Assemblies of God were not a recognized religious body. On May 10, 1949, twelve off- and on-air staffers went on strike in a labor dispute, taking both stations off-air. Broadcasts were resumed one day later with replacement personnel and the transmitter towers were monitored by the Lorain County Sherriff. WEOL successfully sued Lorain's mayor, chief of police, and chief of public safety in July 1949 when they denied the station access to reports and information. By April 1950, Maurice Condon, former sidekick to Jack Paar and brother of Plain Dealer television editor George E. Condon, was named general manager. Condon was the sixth person in the role in two years; the instability was attributed to disagreements between management and Ammel.
Litigation against The Lorain Journal U.S. Justice Department antitrust lawsuit
On May 15, 1949, two agents from the U.S. Justice Department's antitrust division visited the offices of The Lorain Journal, a daily newspaper that held a monopoly on news coverage and advertising revenue in Lorain.. The inquiry was centered around accusations of the Journals public hostility towards WEOL and the FCC; the Journal described WEOL as "... the attempted invasion of the Lorain field by an outside radio station". The Journal and the co-owned Mansfield News-Journal in Mansfield, Ohio, applied for radio stations in both cities in 1946, but were ultimately rejected by the FCC due to boycott practices against advertisers of Mansfield station WMAN. On November 15, 1948, WEOL accused the Journal on-air of an "advertising dictatorship" against the station that was "simply a carbon copy of the Mansfield situation" and criticized the paper (along with the Elyria Chronicle-Telegram) for refusing to carry their program logs, even if offered as paid advertising.
The Justice Department sued the Journal on November 15, 1949, with violating the Sherman Antitrust Act by punishing business that wished to advertise on WEOL or The Sunday News, a weekly newspaper, and acting as a "private government which rules" Lorain. The Journal requested an immediate trial, with the paper's legal counsel Parker Fulton calling the lawsuit "too important a case to have a new and novel interpretation of law". A pre-trial stop-gap injunction the Justice Department sought for immediate relief to WEOL and the News was denied by U.S. Northern Ohio district court Judge Emerich B. Freed. Unaware of the dispute, the Lorain County Republican Party placed political advertising for both outlets but had their Journal ads abruptly cancelled by Journal business manager D. P. Self; a party spokesman called it "unexpected" and "... completely disrupted our campaign advertising plans".
The trial began on March 2, 1950, and lasted for eight days, with the Justice Department calling 65 witnesses to the stand. Former WEOL manager Charles Thonquest testified the station offered to advertise in the Journal to promote their launch, but was denied. Self told Thornquest that it was against standard practice for Lorain businesses to advertise in the Chronicle-Telegram or for Elyria businesses to advertise in the Journal. An executive for Sears, Roebuck & Co. testified the Journal refused to renew their contract if they continued to advertise in the Sunday News, and a Lorain haberdasher testified he was personally visited by Self after agreeing to advertise with WEOL and pressured to choose between it or the Journal. A letter written by Self to area businesses stated any advertisers associating with WEOL would have their Journal contracts cancelled in 30 days. Much of the testimony was repetitive and often unchallenged. Cross-examination by Fulton revealed Ammel invited correspondence from out-of-state listeners after Ammel learned of the Justice Department's investigation, but Freed ruled the evidence obtained was admissible in court. The Journals lone witness, publisher Samuel A. Horvitz, asserted their advertising policy was intended for clients to choose between advertising on the newspaper or the radio station. Horvitz also claimed Howard Metzenbaum, then a broker for Will S. Halle & Co., offered to arrange a sale of WEOL to the Journal, which Horvitz rejected.
Judge Freed issued a memorandum on August 29, 1950, finding the Journal violated key provisions of the Sherman Antitrust Act in an attempt to maintain their near-monopoly on advertising revenue in Lorain. Freed's opinion was combined with the rest of the U.S. Northern Ohio district court the following day. The Journal was additionally found to have acted in a "predatory" and illegal manner and tried to "destroy" WEOL; the Journal vowed to appeal the ruling before the U.S. Supreme Court. A proposed U.S. Justice Department decree sought to forbid the Journal, News-Journal or the Horvitz family from purchasing any competing paper or radio station in Lorain or Mansfield, which the Journal called "repugnant". As part of Freed's final ruling, an injunction was placed on the Journal forbidding them on refusing advertising from anyone that advertised with WEOL, and was required to publish a weekly notice to readers "in a conspicuous location" for 26 weeks. The Supreme Court upheld Freed's decision in Lorain Journal Co. v. United States, argued on October 17, 1951, and decided unanimously on December 11, 1951.
Treble damages lawsuit and license challenge Prior to the Supreme Court ruling, Elyria-Lorain sued the Journal seeking $984,000 in treble damages, triple the amount of revenue lost due to the Journals advertising policies. In a front-page editorial, the Journal decried the Elyria Telephone Company—who they claimed controlled WEOL due to Ammel's management—and the Ohio Independent Telephone Association as "true monopolies", assailing the litigation as a tactic to silence the paper over their coverage of rate increases. WMAN then sued the News-Journal for $1.8 million in treble damages, alleging they were subject to the same policies against advertisers.
The Journal and News-Journal filed challenges to WEOL and WMAN's broadcast licenses when both came up for renewal in late September 1955, claiming both stations pirated stories, circulated and broadcast false information to injure the newspapers, and questioned if they fulfilled program commitments made to the FCC. The piracy allegations followed Journal editor Don Miller's arrest on November 20, 1952, after assaulting WEOL newscaster James Cochran at the Antlers studios; Miller claimed Cochran read a Journal story about a proposed highway on-air before the paper was to be printed. WEOL denied the charges and accused Samuel A. Horvitz and the Journal of a history of trying to "eliminate and any all competition". After being designated for hearing, the FCC denied the challenges and renewed the licenses for both on December 19, 1956.
Horvitz died in 1956; by the time WEOL's lawsuit went to trial on May 16, 1960, the executors of Horvitz's estate took his place as defendants. The Journals treasurer was the lone witness the newspaper called to the stand, and stated WEOL experienced revenue gains throughout 1949, 1950 and 1951. Judge James C. Connell initially ruled in favor of the Journal, citing a failure by the station to prove any damages to revenue occurred. After the Ohio District Courts of Appeals ordered a retrial, Connell reversed his ruling on February 6, 1964, in favor of WEOL, but only awarded the station $30,000. WEOL appealed the judgement to the Ohio District Court as inadequate, Connell was overruled and another retrial was ordered, with the appeals court implying a different judge oversee it. The case was settled in 1967 with $96,000 awarded to WEOL; the WMAN lawsuit never went to trial and was settled one year later.
The WEOL-TV channel 31 permit