WHIO-FM
 | |
| City | Pleasant Hill, Ohio |
|---|---|
| Broadcast area | Dayton metropolitan area |
| Branding | News Talk Radio AM 1290/FM 95.7 WHIO |
| Slogan | Dayton's Weather, Traffic and News Station |
| Frequency | 95.7 MHz |
| First air date | November 30, 1960 (as WPTW-FM) |
| Format | News/Talk |
| ERP | 50,000 watts |
| HAAT | 145 meters |
| Class | B |
| Facility ID | 73908 |
| Transmitter coordinates | 40°13′3.00″N 84°17′37.00″W / 40.2175000°N 84.2936111°W |
| Callsign meaning | OHIO[1] |
| Former callsigns |
WPTW-FM (1960-1989) WCLR (1989-2000) WDPT (2000-2006) |
| Affiliations |
Fox News Radio Westwood One Network Premiere Radio Networks |
| Owner |
Cox Radio (Cox Radio, Inc.) |
| Sister stations | WHIO, WHIO-TV, WHKO, WZLR |
| Webcast | Listen Live |
| Website | News/Talk Radio WHIO |
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.
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.[2] The transmitter site is northwest of Piqua.
History
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." Before that it was WCLR as "Clear 95" airing easy listening music (as did its predecessor WPTW-FM for many years) when the transmitter was moved from its studios to its present location near the rural community of Houston just north of Piqua in 1986. It switched to "light and easy favorites" in 1989 and again to 50s/60s/early 70s oldies as "Kool 95" in early 1993 with repeater station WZLR in Xenia (the former WDJK) and later to the "Oldies 95" branding after the station was sold by founder/owner Richard Hunt (dba:WPTW Radio Inc....later Clear 95 Inc.) to Cox in 1997. On January 24, 2007, Cox filed an application to move WHIO-FM to Sharonville, Ohio, a suburb of Cincinnati. Those plans were later scrapped.
WPTW started as a daytime AM station in 1947 with its FM station first signing on the air on November 30, 1960. 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.
WPTW, 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 and maintains a working studio for the FM operation which relays the audio from the Dayton studio to the Houston FM transmitter.
References
External links
- News/Talk Radio WHIO
- Query the FCC's FM station database for WHIO
- Radio-Locator information on WHIO
- Query Nielsen Audio's FM station database for WHIO