WFAN (660 AM) is a commercial radio station licensed to New York, New York, with a sports radio format, branded "Sports Radio 66 AM and 101.9 FM" or "The Fan". Owned by Audacy, Inc., the station serves the New York metropolitan area, while its 50,000-watt clear channel signal can be heard at night throughout much of the eastern United States and Canada. WFAN's studios are located in the Hudson Square neighborhood of lower Manhattan and its transmitter is located on High Island in the Bronx.

The current WFAN, and its sports format, is the second New York City station with that call sign and programming. The original WFAN was launched on July 1, 1987, on 1050 AM, as the world's first radio station to adopt the sports radio format around-the-clock.

The WFAN call letters and sports format were moved to the former WNBC at 660 kHz on October 7, 1988. WNBC's history dated to 1922, when it began operation as WEAF, licensed to Western Electric. Purchased by the Radio Corporation of America in 1926, it became the flagship of the NBC Radio Network, the first national radio network in the United States, later becoming WRCA and WNBC.

AT&T had an early interest in radiotelephone development, although initially only as a method for establishing telephone links to locations where it was not possible to string wire lines. Lee de Forest's development of vacuum-tube amplification would prove invaluable for progress in a number of areas. In July 1913 the company spent $50,000 to purchase from the inventor the patent rights for telephone wire amplification, and in 1915 used this innovation to make the first transcontinental telephone calls. In October 1914, the company further purchased the commercial patent rights for radio signalling for $90,000, and in October 1915 conducted test radio transmissions from the Navy's station in Arlington, Virginia, NAA, that were heard as far away as Paris, France and Hawaii.

AT&T's main competitor in the radio field would be the Radio Corporation of America (RCA), which was formed in 1919 as a subsidiary of General Electric (GE). Because no single company held sufficient patents rights to operate radio systems without infringing on other company's patents, a series of cross-licensing agreements were concluded between a series of companies holding key patents, and on July 1, 1920, AT&T signed a comprehensive agreement with GE. These agreements in effect assigned dominance in specified areas of the radio industry to individual participating companies, which eventually would meet with anti-trust challenges. In addition, conflicting interpretations of some of the pact's clauses by the signatories would lead to numerous disputes, especially between AT&T and the other participants, known collectively as the "radio group".

On December 1, 1921, the U.S. Department of Commerce, which regulated radio at this time, adopted a regulation formally establishing a broadcasting station category, which set aside the wavelength of 360 meters (833 kHz) for entertainment broadcasts, and 485 meters (619 kHz) for market and weather reports. AT&T soon recognized that it had the technical expertise and patent rights needed to play an important, and possibly dominant, role in the broadcasting industry. A December 1921 memo prepared by two AT&T engineers proposed that the company construct a nationwide radio network, using the company's long lines to connect together individual stations. They also noted that "this service would enable the national and local advertisers, industrial institutions of all kinds, and even individuals if they desire, to send forth information and advertising matter audibly to thousands". AT&T moved quickly to start implementing this plan, and on February 11, 1922, formally announced its intention to develop a "national chain of radio transmitting stations".

A key component was the construction by AT&T of a well equipped New York City station. In early 1922 an experimental station, 2XY, was built atop the AT&T "Long Lines" building at 24 Walker Street. On April 29, 1922, the Walker Street station was issued a broadcasting station license, for operation on 360 meters, with the call sign of WBAY. On May 19 a second New York City broadcasting station, also on 360 meters, was licensed to the Western Electric Company, an AT&T subsidiary located at 463 West Street, with the call letters WDAM. Ten days later, this call sign was changed to WEAF. All of these call signs were randomly assigned from a sequential roster of available call letters, although at the time it was noted that WEAF matched the entrance artwork at AT&T headquarters at 195 Broadway, which depicted the four classical elements of water, earth, air and fire.

The original plan was that AT&T would not originate any programming of its own, and instead would rent WBAY out for commercial use, $40 for 15 minutes daytime, $50 during evenings, which, using an existing telephone term, was called "toll" broadcasting. However, initially there was very little interest in this idea, and in order to begin service the company had to start broadcasting its own programs. The debut broadcast over WBAY, of recorded music, took place on July 25, 1922, its signal was found to be weaker than expected, so on August 16, 1922, broadcasting operations were transferred to the WEAF transmitter located at West Street. It was later reported that the first WEAF broadcast included the singer Marguerite Dunlap.