WHIO (AM)

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WHIO is Dayton, Ohio's only all news and talk radio station. WHIO was Cox Radio's first station started by company founder Ohio Governor James M. Cox in 1929 in the Dayton Daily News building downtown. To get permission to create the new station, Cox had to purchase WLBW in Oil City, PA and then move it to Dayton. The station was first broadcast on 1260AM which was the frequency of WLBW, but in the early 1930's moved to the 1290AM frequency where it currently resides. WHIO broadcasts at 5,000 watts. Its studios are located with WHIO-TV's studios and offices on Wilmington Pike in Kettering. Its transmitter and towers are located to the southeast off Wilmington Pike on East David Road at Croftshire Drive.

WHIO's long history in the market included Lou Emm. Emm started at WHIO in the early 1940's and retired in 1992. When Emm died a few years later all Dayton radio stations paused for a moment of silence. Phil Donahue started here as the host of the weekday talk show "Conversation Piece" in the 1960s before his move to television and competitor WLWD (now WDTN) in 1967. His show became nationally syndicated beginning in 1970. During this era,Winston Hoehner was news director at WHIO-AM for 25 years and was a member of the Ohio Associated Press Broadcast Journalism Hall of Fame. He died in 1990. The format of the station during the music era was always either what we would call "standards" or "Soft Adult Contemporary." WHIO was the originating station of a regional news network in the 1960s and 70s which was aired late afternoons on stations in surrounding communities throughout the Miami Valley as "The DP&L News Network."(for its sponsor, The Dayton Power and Light Company.) A similar network aired in the 1990s during this same time frame as "The Newscenter 7 Radio Network."

WHIO is home to popular talk radio shows such as Rush Limbaugh, Clark Howard, Sean Hannity and Michael Savage. The morning show broadcasts an all news format, the only station of it's kind in the Dayton area. The specialty of the format includes news every half hour, traffic reports and weather every fifteen minutes. WHIO serves as the broadcast home for University of Dayton Football and basketball. The station is a Fox News Radio affiliate.

On October 30, 2006 Cox Radio pulled the plug on All-80's format WDPT (95.7 The Point) and now rebroadcasts WHIO on the 95.7 FM frequency. 95.7 is 50,000 watts and covers the entire south central Ohio region and reaches into Eastern Indiana.