The "Country Giant" FM station blanketing Southwestern Ohio changed its tune Tuesday afternoon.
The classic country format — which had beensimulcast on Middletown's WNKN-FM (105.9) and Dry Ridge's WNKR-FM (106.7) — ended after nearly five years when the Middletown station played "You Should Be Dancing" by the Bee Gees and "God Only Knows" by The Beach Boys.
Rebranded as "The Oasis," the Middletown format features rock music from the late 1960s through about 1983, says Jeff Ziesman, owner of Grant County Broadcasters, which bought the former WNKU-FM network stationin Middletown from Northern Kentucky University in 2017.
Listeners to "The Oasis" Tuesday heard the slogans "radio for grown-ups," "all the music you don't hear on the radio any more" and "where the music went."
Hits by Chicago, The Beatles, Doobie Brothers, Aretha Franklin, Carole King, Earth Wind & Fire, Hall & Oates, Supremes, James Taylor, The Guess Who, Fleetwood Mac, Carpenters, Hollies, Simon & Garfunkel, Stevie Wonder and Santana will fill a Cincinnati-Dayton radio void between 1960s songs on WDJO and the 1980s and later songs on WGRR-FM by Journey, Whitesnake, R.E.M., Elton John, Bon Jovi and The Red Hot Chili Peppers.
"This is for people above the age of 45," Ziesmann says. "The music of the late '60s, '70s and early '80s has been off the air for a long time, because the big companies didn't want the older demos (audience). But we do a good job of selling the older demos."
He hopes to bring listeners back to terrestrial radio from satellite or internet music services. "I think there's a pretty big hole in the market for this in Dayton and Cincinnati," Ziesmann says.
The Middletown station is what radio insiders call "a blowtorch." The signal reaches from Wapakoneta, 110 miles north of Cincinnati, to Florence and Union in Northern Kentucky. Before he bought the station and installed a new transmitter, Ziesmann didn't realize the Middletown signal would overlap so much with WNKR-FM's 106.7 in Northern Kentucky, Clermont County and the southern half of Hamilton County.
"It just makes sense to put two different products on the air," he says. The classic country format, after some initial success, "never caught on. It didn't do what I thought it was going to do" in terms of ratings.
Cincinnati radio veteran Jeff Bolen, who has hosted mornings as "Maverick" on the classic country simulcast, will be the 5-10 a.m. DJ on "The Oasis" as Bolen. Gina Matthews also will switch from country to "The Oasis" 2-7 p.m.
Kert Radel, former manager and host on Hamilton's WMOH-AM and the Middletown station, will do weekends on "The Oasis," Ziesmann says. Radel has been president and CEO of the Fairfield Chamber of Commerce since leaving radio in 2008.
Longtime Cincinnati DJ Ernie Brown, who has been doing weekends and fill-in shifts on the stations, will host 5-10 a.m. on classic country. No DJs will be heard the rest of the day.
The music streams at wherethemusicwent.com or 1059the oasis.com.
