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Dayton Format Flips

A

alans613

What are some of your favorite "Format Flips" in Dayton radio history? WGTZ's flip from WJAI and Beautiful Music to CHR/Top 40 WGTZ Z-93 on March 15, 1984 would be one of mine.
 
WTUE from top 40 to AOR 31 years ago..didn't hear the actual flip but I left town on a Friday listening to top 40 and came back Sunday evening to something called "T105".
 
Unmistakably WJAI's switch from nostalgia/big band to WGTZ "Z-93" I think it was John King himself who conjured up the "Eaton/Dayton and Springfield alive" pun-like legal ID when he did mornings there with Terry Dorsey's recorded drop-ins.

Clear 95 becoming Kool 95. Great talent,great station...could never understand why it had to switch nicknames to Oldies 95 after Cox purchased it??? Hey,if it works..don't fix it I always say!

Now for the worst:

WDAO moving from FM to AM and they had no say about it after it became WWSN,then WMMX and it's just not the same. WDAO was best on FM.

WING's decline after King & Dorsey and Kirkie left thereafter. CNN HN simulcast and talk was a waste of its 5,000 watts before gong to ESPN Radio. It should have stayed as oldies to this day after Kool 95 came and went. The jingles,lively guys and its rich Top 40 history was there as was WSAI.

The Point switching to WHIO-AM simulcast. Ditto! (...and I DON'T mean Rush's rants!)
 
Way back in time, I would say that WONE-AM flipping to Country from Top 40, would have been a low point,
just as Cincinnati's WUBE (1-2-3-W-B) flipping to Country from Top 40 (after 13 years in the format, including
the WCPO era) had to be a very harsh low point!!!
 
NoWayNoCC said:
One of my least favorite was around 1993 when WDJK got ruined by being made a simulcast of WCLR. What a waste that was.
Click to expand...
That flip occured on Monday, August 9, 1993, leaving talented people like Jeff Stevens and Allen Rantz unemployed. Actually for a few months before the simulcast with WCLR, at 10 AM following the last "Breakfast Club with Jeff Stevens" and the playing of Night Ranger's "Goodbye" and all of the WDJK/Power 95 imaging from the 80s oldies experiment from July-August 1993, they immediately went to a simulcast of AM 1500 WBZI, which at the time was home of mainly farm news...what a dumb way to waste a transmitter! They started simulcasting WCLR when they flipped to oldies in late-1993 I believe.
 
For me it was when WUBE switched from the Drake Format in 68. I know Drake said he could make any station a winner and failed at UBE because of the poor signal and stong competition from WSAI, the powerhouse of the sixties. I have hours and hours of airchecks from UBE when Big Al Law, Gary Corey and none other than the great Bwanna Johnny, (who died last year) were all on the station. Drake had the greatest format of the sixties, none other even came close. I still miss it, and it has been a long long time.( I know this isn't a Dayton station flip, but it sure brought back memories)
 
Re: Dayton/Cincinnati Format Flips

Time Traveler said:
just as Cincinnati's WUBE (1-2-3-W-B) flipping to Country from Top 40 (after 13 years in the format, including the WCPO era) had to be a very harsh low point!!!
Click to expand...

Somewhere around here I've got an aircheck of that WUBE midnight format flip from Top 40 to country. Mike's Scott's final rock song was "The Boxer" by Simon & Garfunkle. The flip side of midnight was Jay Stone on "Countrypolitan" WUBE.
 
Re: Dayton/Cincinnati Format Flips

FRR said:
For me it was when WUBE switched from the Drake Format in 68. I know Drake said he could make any station a winner and failed at UBE because of the poor signal and stong competition from WSAI, the powerhouse of the sixties. I have hours and hours of airchecks from UBE when Big Al Law, Gary Corey and none other than the great Bwanna Johnny, (who died last year) were all on the station. Drake had the greatest format of the sixties, none other even came close. I still miss it, and it has been a long long time.( I know this isn't a Dayton station flip, but it sure brought back memories)
Click to expand...

As much as I liked the Drake format, I was devastated when WUBE switched from the "All American" format to Drake. Drake took all the personality out of WUBE, even making Bwanna Johnny change his name for a brief period to something like Johnny Johnson. WUBE was coming off a strong summer vs. WSAI when they made this fateful switch.
 
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