WBLZ

[chrisalcorn]

Just wondering if anyone remembers WBLZ 103.5. I think this might have been one of the areas first attempts at a FM urban format. I could pick it up all the way to Lexington Ky but couldnt hear it all in downtown Cincinnati!! Really miss it after weakling WIZF came on and somehow took command.

 

[microbob]

WBLZ was the first Urban on FM in Cincinnati. I believe when they first started they were simulcasting 1480 WCIN. They did try AOR as Rock 104 briefly but returned to Urban. By the time WIZF came on in 1990, WBLZ was CHR/Urban which is why The WIZ gained ground and became the leader in the format. I can remember when someone cut their transmission line causing them to go off the air for over a week and when they came back on, They played The Gap Band Who Dropped a Bomb On Me over and over. Q102 also did a parody song Who Dropped a Bomb On Me BLZ which was funny at the time.

 

[KFodor]

WBLZ was the first Urban on FM in Cincinnati. I believe when they first started they were simulcasting 1480 WCIN. They did try AOR as Rock 104 briefly but returned to Urban. By the time WIZF came on in 1990, WBLZ was CHR/Urban which is why The WIZ gained ground and became the leader in the format. I can remember when someone cut their transmission line causing them to go off the air for over a week and when they came back on, They played The Gap Band Who Dropped a Bomb On Me over and over. Q102 also did a parody song Who Dropped a Bomb On Me BLZ which was funny at the time.

I was News Director for WCIN when WBLZ came on the air. Any simulcast, if it happened, would have been very short lived, because a live airstaff was in place in the studios (then in the bank building in Hamilton) pretty quickly.

The station started as a CHR...not urban...straight mainstream CHR aimed at Q102. Pat Barry was the PD. The station did OK, but kind of faltered as WOKV-FM, then the station tried an A/C approach (with a lot of 60's oldies thrown in the mix), then a hyper local approach, then sometime after that, the Urban WBLZ was born.

 

[js]

I remember top 40 on 103.5 when it was the WMOH/WYCH simulcast. I thought WOKV was "Disco 103.5"

 

[keys2]

I believe the order after the WMOH/WYCH days went like this from the late 70s into the early 80s:

WOKV - Top 40 - "103 and a half WOKV"
WOKV - Disco - "Disco 103 and a half"
WOKV - AC - A full service approach to AC on FM with news and personality
WOKV - AOR - "Rock 104"
WBLZ - Urban/CHR

WBLZ was a great station with excellent personalities. Initially the simulcast with WCIN-AM was in morning and afternoon drive. Eventually they dropped this.

Btw, I remember when before WYCH this frequency was WHOH and broadcast a good part of their day in German.

 

[Cincinnati Kid]

If you go farther back, I remember when WHOH was a simulcast of WMOH.

 

[KFodor]

I remember top 40 on 103.5 when it was the WMOH/WYCH simulcast. I thought WOKV was "Disco 103.5"

WOKV was disco...for about a year, maybe. But, it began as keys mentions here as a Top 40 station (I know this for a fact because there was an internal battle between programming and engineering at that time over station processing. It's a great story with a funny ending, but it's one that has to be held for a while. I don't want to embarrass anyone who may still be around who was involved.)

I believe keys has the formats in correct order. I don't remember the AOR, but I left WCIN in late 1980, so I may have missed that one. Everything else looks exactly as I remember it, and the simulcast with 'CIN was probably something they did at first...but, once 'BLZ caught on, I'm sure there was plenty of reasons to separate the two.

By the way, the PD for the disco format and the later A/C format, I believe was Duff Lindsay.

 

[Lamont Lester]

Any simulcast, if it happened, would have been very short lived, because a live airstaff was in place in the studios (then in the bank building in Hamilton) pretty quickly.

Spent a Saturday night in that old bank building WBLZ studio with Linda Shane. Best memory was watching the lights on that back of studio CRL processing rack. Smokin' hot audio. Perhaps the best I've ever heard a radio station sound was one summer night driving east on 275 approaching Colerain listening to Shane play Prince "1999."

BTW, the WOKV disco format, IIRC, was also (so to speak) pretty late to the dance. The bloom was already well off that fad format.

 

[microbob]

Anyone know the lineup at WBLZ in its Chr/Urban days? I remember listening to Mike Motley, Linda Shane, Not sure who was their morning news anchor but I think he stayed on when they flipped to oldies as WGRR and did commentary as well. I agree, the processing at the time was excellent. Very hot sounding.

 

[KFodor]

Just wondering if anyone remembers WBLZ 103.5. I think this might have been one of the areas first attempts at a FM urban format. I could pick it up all the way to Lexington Ky but couldnt hear it all in downtown Cincinnati!! Really miss it after weakling WIZF came on and somehow took command.

Maybe in Cincinnati...But WDAO-FM (107.7) in Dayton came on the air in 1964 and was the first black formatted FM station in America.

 

[microbob]

Just wondering if anyone remembers WBLZ 103.5. I think this might have been one of the areas first attempts at a FM urban format. I could pick it up all the way to Lexington Ky but couldnt hear it all in downtown Cincinnati!! Really miss it after weakling WIZF came on and somehow took command.

Maybe in Cincinnati...But WDAO-FM (107.7) in Dayton came on the air in 1964 and was the first black formatted FM station in America.

WDAO had a big 50,000 watt signal that did reach parts of Northern KY and Cincinnati, Although I was only young enough to hear them the last few years of their existence. They were a pioneer for sure.

 

[microbob]

Anyone know the lineup at WBLZ in its Chr/Urban days? I remember listening to Mike Motley, Linda Shane, Not sure who was their morning news anchor but I think he stayed on when they flipped to oldies as WGRR and did commentary as well. I agree, the processing at the time was excellent. Very hot sounding.

Tony Mann is his name. He also did commentary with One Mann's opinion.

 

[keys2]

Anyone know the lineup at WBLZ in its Chr/Urban days?

Jim "Lord" Snowden mornings, Mike Roberts middays (he was the PD, I believe), John Monds afternoon drive. Great sounding jocks. John Monds sounded so good in that format. Very cool, smooth. I used to love to listen to those call letters....WBLZ....roll off those guys' tongues. It was an outstanding station the first two or three years of its existence.

And speaking of WDAO in this thread, that too was a fun listen. I loved soul music as a young teenager and listening to Big DAO in the late 60s and early 70s got me deeper into the genre than the Top 40 stations would go. Some equally good jocks too in Turk Logan, Long John Silver, Bill Carr (Biggie BC), Lankford Stevens. 10-77 WDAO also did a jazz show on Sunday nights with lots of B3 organ trios. Great stuff.

 

[chrisalcorn]

Yeah I wanted to mention WDAO 1077...what led to their demise??? It also was s great station that had a nice signal in the Cincinnati area. They always played "strong" songs that others wouldn't. Now its WDHT which is great and also a station I could pick up here easily until WPBK signed on and there went WDHT ughhh.

 

[microbob]

Anyone know the lineup at WBLZ in its Chr/Urban days?

Jim "Lord" Snowden mornings, Mike Roberts middays (he was the PD, I believe), John Monds afternoon drive. Great sounding jocks. John Monds sounded so good in that format. Very cool, smooth. I used to love to listen to those call letters....WBLZ....roll off those guys' tongues. It was an outstanding station the first two or three years of its existence.

Did some of those jocks stay on when they became Rock 104?

 

[radiotrumpet78]

Found some articles about WOKV in my archives.... Kind of hard to read because of the size of my scanner and the articles were full size newspaper articles...when newspapers used large paper foot prints. But kind of KOOL..... Talks about WCIN too.

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B6CxvemzxNQmeWMtTjlzMXR5WnM/edit

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B6CxvemzxNQmX0gyVEpFWGFTbEU/edit

 

[microbob]

Nice archieves. I don't remember most of their lineup outside of Pat Berry. Interesting that they wanted to play New Music and short versions of songs day and longer versions at night. Q102 was mostly Rock then too.

 

[KFodor]

Yeah I wanted to mention WDAO 1077...what led to their demise??? It also was s great station that had a nice signal in the Cincinnati area. They always played "strong" songs that others wouldn't. Now its WDHT which is great and also a station I could pick up here easily until WPBK signed on and there went WDHT ughhh.

WDAO was owned by the WAVI Broadcasting Corporation (for which WAVI-AM, 1210 was the sister station).

Around 1984, they were sold to new owners, which had no intention whatsoever to own a black formatted radio station. (Still, I guess, the day and age when there were "no black dictates" among some advertisers and agencies). They saw more money making potential in an A/C format, which is where the station is today.

WDAO's intellectual property, and WAVI-AM however, was purchased by a former station sales exec named Jim Johnson, who put WDAO on the 1210 AM frequency...where it exists, as a daytimer, to this day.

 

[KFodor]

Anyone know the lineup at WBLZ in its Chr/Urban days?

Jim "Lord" Snowden mornings, Mike Roberts middays (he was the PD, I believe), John Monds afternoon drive. Great sounding jocks. John Monds sounded so good in that format. Very cool, smooth. I used to love to listen to those call letters....WBLZ....roll off those guys' tongues. It was an outstanding station the first two or three years of its existence.

And speaking of WDAO in this thread, that too was a fun listen. I loved soul music as a young teenager and listening to Big DAO in the late 60s and early 70s got me deeper into the genre than the Top 40 stations would go. Some equally good jocks too in Turk Logan, Long John Silver, Bill Carr (Biggie BC), Lankford Stevens. 10-77 WDAO also did a jazz show on Sunday nights with lots of B3 organ trios. Great stuff.

Mike Roberts was the PD at both 'BLZ and WCIN then. He was a very smart PD. Took a lot of flack from the record tip sheets because he would play crossover top 40 product by white artists on WCIN IF...the black audience liked a song. (Mike figured, "Why should our listeners have to go to WKRC or Q-102 to hear those records?")

With Mike as PD, me as News Director and some great behind the scenes people, and on-air talent (like Frank Bailey, and Lincoln Ware (when he was, seemingly, still a teenager), WCIN rocketed into the mid 5 share range 12 plus...and black adults came back to WCIN. (There was a period of time, where black adults abandoned the station because you couldn't trust the information you got from it...that's why I was hired.) When I left, a young lady I hired from Toledo, Jill Frost became News Director and went on to win multiple journalism awards for the station. I couldn't have been more proud of her.

Mike and I had a tenuous professional relationship at work at first. Then, I realized it was because he was as much of a perfectionist as I was. (Like forces repel) Once I figured that out, we got along fine and, over the years, I've come to really respect what he did there.

 

[alans613]

Yeah I wanted to mention WDAO 1077...what led to their demise??? It also was s great station that had a nice signal in the Cincinnati area. They always played "strong" songs that others wouldn't. Now its WDHT which is great and also a station I could pick up here easily until WPBK signed on and there went WDHT ughhh.

WDAO was owned by the WAVI Broadcasting Corporation (for which WAVI-AM, 1210 was the sister station).

Around 1984, they were sold to new owners, which had no intention whatsoever to own a black formatted radio station. (Still, I guess, the day and age when there were "no black dictates" among some advertisers and agencies). They saw more money making potential in an A/C format, which is where the station is today.

WDAO's intellectual property, and WAVI-AM however, was purchased by a former station sales exec named Jim Johnson, who put WDAO on the 1210 AM frequency...where it exists, as a daytimer, to this day.

I remember the WDAO flip back when I was a kid. I always loved WDAO. I remember them playing "Operator" by Midnight Star & "Basketball" by Kurtis Blow, & of course "The Freaks Come Out At Night". Who bought WDAO in 1984? I remember reading somewhere that before they named the station Star 107.7 that their intention was to name it Sunny 107.7, but changed their minds b/c of Sunny 95 in Columbus.