City Pleasant Hill, Ohio | Frequency 95.7 MHz | |
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Broadcast area Dayton metropolitan area Branding News Talk Radio AM 1290/FM 95.7 WHIO Slogan Dayton's Weather, Traffic and News Station First air date November 30, 1960 (as WPTW-FM) | ||
WHIO-FM (95.7 MHz) is an FM radio station licensed to Pleasant Hill, Ohio and serving the Dayton metropolitan area. The station is owned by Cox Radio and it simulcasts AM sister station 1290 WHIO. After a local news and interview morning show on weekdays, the stations air nationally syndicated talk programs, including Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Clark Howard.
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Until October 30, 2006, WHIO-FM was known as WDPT (for " Dayton's PoinT") "95.7 The Point." The station now carries the programming of News/Talk WHIO in Dayton. The WHIO-FM call letters were formerly used on 99.1 FM when it had a beautiful music radio format before becoming country music station WHKO "K-99.1 FM." The studios and offices are located at 1611 South Main Street in Dayton at the Cox Media Group Building. In July, 2011, the station changed its "community of license" from Piqua, Ohio to Pleasant Hill, Ohio. This change was reportedly necessitated by FCC requirements that the station's main studio be located within 25 miles of its community of license. With the move of Cox Media Group facilities to the South Main Street location, Piqua no longer met that requirement, but Pleasant Hill does. The transmitter site is northwest of Piqua.
WPTW-FM
WPTW started as a daytime AM station in 1947 with its FM station first signing on the air on November 30, 1960. WPTW stood for Piqua, Troy, and West Milton Ohio. After FCC rules changed over daytime AM stations operating on Mexican "clear channel" frequencies, WPTW was finally given approval by the FCC in 1986 to broadcast 24 hours a day, hence WPTW-FM ceased simulcasting a good chunk of WPTW's local news and sports programming and embraced a separate format and image with its call letter change. Hunt was also a co-owner of Valley Antenna Systems (dba:Piqua CATV), later absorbed by Centel Communications in the 1980s and by Time-Warner in the 1990s. For many years he owned WSOO and WSUE in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan as a separate entity before his retirement in the late 1990s. The station ran an easy listening format during the whole period.
Much of WPTW's programming was simulcast on both AM and FM airing traditional middle of the road music using a sophisticated reel-to-reel automation system....with a few minor exceptions for separate programming on WPTW-AM. The syndicated "Dell-O Morning Show" hosted by Dell Olmay was pre-recorded onto automation tapes. In the mid 1970s, there was also a live weekday afternoon show on 1570 AM hosted by Dave Brennan (later of Dayton's WING). The vintage on-air studio gear (a Collins tube-type audio console with original transmitter and Gates transcription turntables almost dating back to the station's beginnings) were properly maintained in mint condition thanks to its long time chief engineer Don Kuether and remained in use until upgrades were made in the late 1970s and 1980s. As the newer stations emerged in neighboring counties, the Troy,Sidney and Greenville studios were eventually closed by the mid-1960s, however its legal ID remained until 1974 as the ever formal: "This is WPTW...FM Stereo...(brief silence on AM frequency to allow for FM ID)...transmitting from Piqua, Ohio."
The Piqua/Troy ID emerged afterwards in 1975.
WPTW-AM 1570, now owned by Muzzy Broadcasting and previously by Miami Valley Radio LLC and Frontier Broadcasting still operates today as a locally originating station in Piqua.
WCLR
After the original WHIO-FM 99.1 flipped to country they wanted to quickly fill the hole. WPTW was associated with Piqua, the city of licence so they while keeping the same format changed the call letters to WCLR with the monikier "Clear 95." Later that year they started to incorporate soft AC vocals, with a full switch to soft AC still under the "Clear 95" name with the "Lite and Easy Favorites positioning statement."
In early 1993 they switched to a Oldies format playing the 1950s through the early 1970s as "Kool 95." Later that year, they purchased WDJK in Xenia flipping the call letters to WZLR and simulcasting the Oldies format. In mid 1997 after the stations were purchased to Cox Media Group the name was changed to "Oldies 95" keeping the same format.
WDPT
From 2000 until 2006, "The Point" aired classic hits from the late 1970s and 1980s and was briefly simulcast on WDTP, 95.3 in Xenia, Ohio before reverting to the WZLR call sign as classic rock-formatted "The Eagle." The 1980s format was consulted by Randy Kabrich, who programmed Q-105 WRBQ in Tampa in the mid-to-late 1980s. The Eagle WZLR now plays much of the same music that The Point played during it's run.
WHIO-FM
In October 2006 after playing Simple Minds "Don't you forget about me," the station began a simulcast of WHIO-AM with the news/talk format.