While General Cinema Corporation purchased WERE-FM after a prior divestiture attempt failed, WLEC and WLEC-FM were initially sold to RadiOhio that December, but that sale was also dismissed. Both WLEC and WLEC-FM were ultimately retained by the sellers and spun off to a limited partnership, Lake Erie Broadcasting. Cleveland Broadcasting president Richard H. Miller became WLEC's general manager, then purchased both stations outright in August 1971, under the Miller Broadcasting name. In July 1986 the station was sold by Miller Broadcasting, headed by Richard H. Miller of Cleveland, to Erie Broadcasting Co., owned by Cleveland's Jim Embrescia. After a brief period in the hands of Signal One Communications from October 1987 to May 1990, it passed, along with WCPZ FM 102.7, to Erie Broadcasting II, Inc., a new company also headed by Embrescia. The format at the time was full-service adult contemporary. On April 30, 1997, it was announced that Jacor Communications, Inc. agreed to buy WLEC and WCPZ from Erie Broadcasting II, Inc. for $7.65 million. The sale was approved and the license transferred on June 25. In May 1999, Clear Channel Communications completed its $6.5 billion purchase of Jacor and its 454 stations, including WLEC. WLEC itself maintained a pop standards/beautiful music format dubbed "American Music Classics". This was a traditional leaning standards format playing artists like Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand, Nat King Cole, Neil Diamond, Ella Fitzgerald, Tony Bennett, Carpenters, Ames Brothers, and others. The station also mixed in small amounts of contemporary artists doing standards such as Rod Stewart, Michael Bublé, Diana Krall, and others. WLEC dropped standards and switched to Fox Sports Radio on September 8, 2006. On November 16, 2006, WLEC, WCPZ and WMJK were formally announced for sale as part of Clear Channel's divestiture of almost 450 small and middle-market radio properties in the U.S. The cluster was sold on January 15, 2008 to Fremont, Ohio based BAS Broadcasting, and BAS took over all three stations on February 1. WLEC then sort of changed back to a standards format on March 3, 2008, using the more classic adult contemporary Timeless format of soft oldies from the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s from ABC Radio (later Citadel Media). Following Citadel Media's ending the Timeless format in February 2010, WLEC adopted the "Lounge" format from Dial Global Local (formerly part of the Waitt Radio Networks umbrella of formats).