Two longtime local radio voices will return on air with a new mid-morning show.

Star 94.7 FM and WGFT (1330-AM) will become ESPN Mahoning Valley starting Friday. While most of its airtime will be filled by nationally syndicated ESPN sports programming, two locally produced shows also will be part of the format change starting Monday.

Ron Potesta will do sports talk from 3 to 6 p.m. weekdays, and John Batcho (better known as Mr. Sports to longtime radio listeners) and Ron Fantone will host the 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. weekday slot.

Batcho was Mr. Sports on WYFM (102.9 FM) and other outlets for decades, while Fantone is a radio lifer who’s worked from East Liverpool to Ashtabula along Ohio’s eastern border and had the unenviable task of succeeding local radio legend Boots Bell as morning host of WNIO-AM after Bell died.

Batcho said Karl Bloom, owner of the stations, approached him about returning to radio, and he suggested partnering with Fantone.

“I said, ‘Listen, if I’m going to do this, I want to do it with Fantone,'” Batcho said. “I tell you, it’s almost too good to be true.”

Batcho and Fantone often talked about working together and had some potential opportunities fall through. Except for a brief time when both were at WRRO-AM in Warren in the late ’80s and a stint when both were working for WYFM, it hasn’t been a reality until now.

“We’re so similar in a lot of ways,” Fantone said. “We’re very opinionated, and our senses of humor are the same, and it’s always been like that. We just immediately connected from the first time we worked together. Whether I’m talking to John on air or sitting here talking to John, everything just flows. It’s really easy. I wouldn’t want to do this with anybody else.”

The goal is to create the kind of radio show that was commonplace when Fantone and Batcho got started — local radio personalities creating programming with local listeners in mind.

When Batcho and Fantone are talking as friends, sports is a frequent topic of conversation, so doing sports talk is comfortable for both. However, both said their new radio show won’t be limited to sporting events, and they’ve been given the green light to do that.

“I have as much clout and contacts in the music industry as I do in the sports, maybe even more so, and I want to use that,” Batcho said. ‘m going to get local people, notables. I’m going to get some national people on. The interviews I’ve done over the course of my career, spanning from the ’50s, ’60s, ’70s, ’80s, ’90s rock stars, people that even did doo wop, ’60s soul and R&B legends who are still with us. I still have access to those people.”

Fantone chimed in, “And we’re going to have psychics and mediums on, so we’ll get the people that are no longer with us too.”

One topic will be off the table.

“We will not touch politics in any way, shape or form,” Fantone said. “I think that’s a smart move, because you’re going to alienate a big section of your audience no matter what you say, and you don’t want to do that, so it’s better to just stay away from it.”