Oxford Radio Station

[Radio Fish Heads]

Remembering little WOXR 97.7 radio... ( Years before WOXY )..... nothing personal
against the 97X owners; but this is a good example of why --- little towns like
Oxford ( at one time......it was the Village of Oxford) should own their own little
Home Town station.... Little towns like Oxford have there own flavor, their own
personality and they are unique.

It was owned by BGS Broadcasting out of Kokomo, Indiana. Jim Gregg ran the
station on a shoe string budget. He hired local people to run it, and he came
into town about once a month during the 60's . He owned Oxford, Kokomo
and Rochester, New York I was told. All were little stations. WOXR FM was a
Class A radio station I think.

The studios were in a few locations in uptown Oxford. The old studios were
above Beasleys Bakery and The Shop of the Elves...You had fresh bakery smells
coming through the floors, and a cold draft from the winter outside ! You may
remember the black fire-escape up the side of the Bldg ? That was where LP
winners would come up to the station, and get their goodies. LP's , t-shirts
and 45's....Remember thoes ? Yes, WOXR played real records . Albums and
45's on thoes TT.....

The station even sold the time on the half hour to the Buckeye Food Market . I
remember hearing album cuts I never heard on WSAI or WING radio . I think
WEBN in 67 & 68 even listened to them to see what they were playing from
albums... They also had a large "Dorm listening audience at Miami and Western
College for women".....

Deregulation and ( FCC) the Clinton adminstration helped large Broadcast
Companies like Clear Channel buy up the world .....Clear Channel the K-Mart
of Radio Stations all across America. The day the music died in Oxford ; the
day the man came and like a theif in the dark ....... packed up the Cleveland
Browns, and took them to another City because they could do it, and the
hell with the local people ; local news , local flavor, and a sound that was
small town America.... Thats where we are today ! Thanks to Clear Channel
and Companies like them .

Turn them off !

 

[BobOnTheJob]

Remembering little WOXR 97.7 radio... ( Years before WOXY )..... nothing personal
against the 97X owners; but this is a good example of why --- little towns like
Oxford ( at one time......it was the Village of Oxford) should own their own little
Home Town station.... Little towns like Oxford have there own flavor, their own
personality and they are unique.

It was owned by BGS Broadcasting out of Kokomo, Indiana. Jim Gregg ran the
station on a shoe string budget. He hired local people to run it, and he came
into town about once a month during the 60's . He owned Oxford, Kokomo
and Rochester, New York I was told. All were little stations. WOXR FM was a
Class A radio station I think.

The studios were in a few locations in uptown Oxford. The old studios were
above Beasleys Bakery and The Shop of the Elves...You had fresh bakery smells
coming through the floors, and a cold draft from the winter outside ! You may
remember the black fire-escape up the side of the Bldg ? That was where LP
winners would come up to the station, and get their goodies. LP's , t-shirts
and 45's....Remember thoes ? Yes, WOXR played real records . Albums and
45's on thoes TT.....

The station even sold the time on the half hour to the Buckeye Food Market . I
remember hearing album cuts I never heard on WSAI or WING radio . I think
WEBN in 67 & 68 even listened to them to see what they were playing from
albums... They also had a large "Dorm listening audience at Miami and Western
College for women".....

Deregulation and ( FCC) the Clinton adminstration helped large Broadcast
Companies like Clear Channel buy up the world .....Clear Channel the K-Mart
of Radio Stations all across America. The day the music died in Oxford ; the
day the man came and like a theif in the dark ....... packed up the Cleveland
Browns, and took them to another City because they could do it, and the
hell with the local people ; local news , local flavor, and a sound that was
small town America.... Thats where we are today ! Thanks to Clear Channel
and Companies like them .

Turn them off !

WOXR was a good top 40 station in the day. In the late 60's, one of their jingles sang "Ching Ching A Ling, On 97 W O X R, The Hits Keep Happening, (several more) Ching Ching A Lings"...it was hokey, but in a good way. I worked there briefly in 1971, but unfortunately for me, almost to the day I started (in a 1 story building on College Ave??), they dropped top 40 & went to some flavor of AOR. One day their transmitter on Stillwell-Beckett Road (again, from memory) went off the air...found a squirrel in the building had knocked a small roll of toilet paper into a hole on the top of the transmitter & the blower did a slice & dice job on it. That was fun to clean up & return to the air. The processing was a mono Volumax 411 sitting on a concrete block connected to an equalized phone line. I'll concur, it was run on a shoe string.

 

[KFodor]

And, of course, in the 70's there were the infamous "Roll Away The Rock" weekends which happened, of course, over the Easter holiday...

Might not have made the station popular with the Vatican, but...all of the "guest DJ's" were fun to listen to. Since many were, in fact, guests, they had to go in and do an air shift on equipment which, for some, was totally unfamiliar. (Sure you can know how to run a board, but just walk in an unfamiliar studio and try and do it with perfection...reaching for the wrong switch was inevitable.) And, of course, that led to a number of "bloopers" which radio students might laugh about for years.

 

[Radio Fish Heads]

The old WOXR -------" Down on the Farm" ( homemade Jingle out of their little
production room..... and of course the famous------WOXR Jingle song----" this
here stations got a lot power, but thats because of the water tower - WOXR
Oxford " -----Legal ID .......

Jocks that used to work there in the 60's....( 67-68-69 ) years...... Tom
McMurray , Jay Benham , Terry Wilson - Marathon Man at the Oxford, House,
Dave Michaels, Bob Zix, Wil Tieman, Todd Stevens, Jay Christian, Mike
McMurray - Toms younger brother.... Vic Parrette - Engineer..... Jeri Parrette
at the front desk - Office manager.... ( later years - Rick Sellers ( Ox of Oxford)
Duke of Dayton - Richie Allen - came down from WING and did a guest show
on the Big 97.... Greg Tatum later News on WING radio.....

Many funny stories about the little station.... in 1968 Dave Michaels was doing
the morning show, and he in between records ( as a bit ) said (made up female
name ) had just retired from the Oxford Phone Company after 25 years and
over thoes years had listened in on hundreds of phone calls and was writing a
"Tell all book about who was sleeping with who in town ".......

Within minutes all Hell broke loose.... the station was flooded with phone calls,
General Telephone in Oxford was flooded, and the calls went all the way to
Marion, Ohio to a Manager of the Company, and Dave was called into Bernie
Doyles office at 10 am and fired from the station that morning ; after he went
back on the air, and said it was a joke, and NOT TRUE !!!!!

This is just one of many WOXR stories..... Great memories..... maybe some
people remember the "Great Flush In" in Oxford, also promoted on WOXR....

WOXR''''''darr'''''' yep'''thats a good'in ......

 

[kyscott]

found a squirrel in the building had knocked a small roll of toilet paper into a hole on the top of the transmitter & the blower did a slice & dice job on it. That was fun to clean up & return to the air.

Here's a question I might not want answered. What was a roll of toilet tissue doing on top of the transmitter?

 

[BobOnTheJob]

found a squirrel in the building had knocked a small roll of toilet paper into a hole on the top of the transmitter & the blower did a slice & dice job on it. That was fun to clean up & return to the air.

Here's a question I might not want answered. What was a roll of toilet tissue doing on top of the transmitter?

Ya know Scott, I asked myself that question more than once. That was the first time (and last time) I was in that hut...I was on the air that day & it "took a dump" (couldn't resist that). The company engineer was in Kokomo or some other far removed place. At the ripe 'ole age of 18, I was asked if I'd look at it, as I was Assistant Chief at a Cincinnati station at the time. An equally ponderous question : Why was there a wide open hole in the top of the Gates FM-3G (or whatever the suffix was) transmitter big enough for a roll of TP to fall into? That was only the second transmitter I had ever had my hands in, so that question didn't come to me until some time later.

 

[BobOnTheJob]

The old WOXR -------" Down on the Farm" ( homemade Jingle out of their little
production room..... and of course the famous------WOXR Jingle song----" this
here stations got a lot power, but thats because of the water tower - WOXR
Oxford " -----Legal ID .......

Jocks that used to work there in the 60's....( 67-68-69 ) years...... Tom
McMurray , Jay Benham , Terry Wilson - Marathon Man at the Oxford, House,
Dave Michaels, Bob Zix, Wil Tieman, Todd Stevens, Jay Christian, Mike
McMurray - Toms younger brother.... Vic Parrette - Engineer..... Jeri Parrette
at the front desk - Office manager.... ( later years - Rick Sellers ( Ox of Oxford)
Duke of Dayton - Richie Allen - came down from WING and did a guest show
on the Big 97.... Greg Tatum later News on WING radio.....

Many funny stories about the little station.... in 1968 Dave Michaels was doing
the morning show, and he in between records ( as a bit ) said (made up female
name ) had just retired from the Oxford Phone Company after 25 years and
over thoes years had listened in on hundreds of phone calls and was writing a
"Tell all book about who was sleeping with who in town ".......

Within minutes all Hell broke loose.... the station was flooded with phone calls,
General Telephone in Oxford was flooded, and the calls went all the way to
Marion, Ohio to a Manager of the Company, and Dave was called into Bernie
Doyles office at 10 am and fired from the station that morning ; after he went
back on the air, and said it was a joke, and NOT TRUE !!!!!

This is just one of many WOXR stories..... Great memories..... maybe some
people remember the "Great Flush In" in Oxford, also promoted on WOXR....

WOXR''''''darr'''''' yep'''thats a good'in ......

That would be "Lovable Huggable Dave Michaels" with Clear Skies & Green Lights or whatever he said on WTUE, where he had a good run in the early 70's. Bill Riley also was doing weekends at the Big 97 but that may have been more like 1970-71...Bill lives in Tucson now...WOXR was his only radio gig.