WDOK (102.1 FM) is a commercial

radio station Radio broadcasting is transmission of audio (sound), sometimes with related metadata, by radio waves to radio receivers belonging to a public audience. In terrestrial radio broadcasting the radio waves are broadcast by a land-based radio ...

licensed to

Cleveland, Ohio Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S ...

, known as "Star 102" and featuring an

adult contemporary Adult contemporary music (AC) is a form of radio-played popular music, ranging from 1960s vocal and 1970s soft rock music to predominantly ballad-heavy music of the present day, with varying degrees of easy listening, pop, soul, R&B, quie ...

format. Owned by Audacy, Inc., the station serves

Greater Cleveland The Cleveland metropolitan area, or Greater Cleveland as it is more commonly known, is the metropolitan area surrounding the city of Cleveland in Northeast Ohio, United States. According to the 2020 United States Census results, the five-county ...

and surrounding

Northeast Ohio The region Northeast Ohio, in the US state of Ohio, in its most expansive usage contains six metropolitan areas ( Cleveland–Elyria, Akron, Canton–Massillon, Youngstown–Warren, Mansfield, and Weirton–Steubenville) along with eight ...

. WDOK's studios are located at the

Halle Building The Halle Building, formerly known as the Pope Building and after 2014 as The Residences at Halle, is an 11-story Chicago School mixed-use structure located in the Downtown Cleveland central business district in Cleveland, Ohio, in the United St ...

Downtown Cleveland Downtown Cleveland is the central business district of Cleveland, Ohio. The economic and symbolic center of the city and the Cleveland-Akron-Canton, OH Combined Statistical Area, it is Cleveland's oldest district, with its Public Square laid out ...

while the

transmitter In electronics and telecommunications, a radio transmitter or just transmitter is an electronic device which produces radio waves with an antenna. The transmitter itself generates a radio frequency alternating current, which is applied to the ...

is in the Cleveland suburb of

Parma Parma (; egl, Pärma, ) is a city in the northern Italian region of Emilia-Romagna known for its architecture, music, art, prosciutto (ham), cheese and surrounding countryside. With a population of 198,292 inhabitants, Parma is the second m ...

. In addition to a standard

analog transmission Analog transmission is a transmission method of conveying information using a continuous signal which varies in amplitude, phase, or some other property in proportion to that information. It could be the transfer of an analog signal, using an an ...

, WDOK broadcasts over two

HD Radio HD Radio (HDR) is a trademark for an in-band on-channel (IBOC) digital radio broadcast technology. It generally simulcasts an existing analog radio station in digital format with less noise and with additional text information. HD Radio is used ...

channels and is available online via

Audacy Audacy, previously known as Radio.com, is a free broadcast and Internet radio platform owned by the namesake company Audacy, Inc. (formerly known as Entercom). The Audacy platform functions as a music recommender system and is the national um ...

History

Beautiful music

The station signed on as WDOK-FM on October 4, 1954, simulcasting its

sister station In broadcasting, sister stations or sister channels are radio or television stations operated by the same company, either by direct ownership or through a management agreement. Radio sister stations will often have different formats, and somet ...

, WDOK (1260 AM). Eventually, WDOK-FM originated its own programming and featured a

beautiful music Beautiful music (sometimes abbreviated as BM, B/EZ or BM/EZ for "beautiful music/easy listening") is a mostly instrumental music format that was prominent in North American radio from the late 1950s through the 1980s. Easy listening, elevator mu ...

format. On December 12, 1965, the AM station changed its

call sign In broadcasting and radio communications, a call sign (also known as a call name or call letters—and historically as a call signal—or abbreviated as a call) is a unique identifier for a transmitter station. A call sign can be formally ass ...

to WIXY and adopted a

Top 40 In the music industry, the Top 40 is the current, 40 most-popular songs in a particular genre. It is the best-selling or most frequently broadcast popular music. Record charts have traditionally consisted of a total of 40 songs. "Top 40" or "cont ...

format. That allowed FM 102.1 to drop the FM

suffix In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns, adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can carr ...

, now identifying as WDOK. The station was branded "Stereo Cleveland", with the slogan "Beautiful Music for the Lands of the Western Reserve." Station personalities and voice overs included Wayne Mack, the founder of WDOK's beautiful music format and producer of the many memorable monthly odes and station breaks that he composed and set to music;

Ken Nordine Ken Nordine (April 13, 1920 – February 16, 2019) was an American voice-over and recording artist, best known for his series of word jazz albums. His deep, resonant voice has also been featured in many commercial advertisements and movie traile ...

(the famous voice of Word

Jazz Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a m ...

), Tom Armstrong, previously the morning host at WGAR AM in the 1940s and 50s; and David Mark, who also worked for Cleveland market "beautiful music" stations WQAL, WKSW, WJW (AM), and WDBN. The station was programmed by Peter Irmiter and Neil Hershberger after they went live. By the 1980s, WDOK had come under common ownership with

WWWE WWWE (1100 kHz) is a commercial AM radio station licensed to Hapeville, Georgia and serving the Atlanta metropolitan area. Owned by Beasley Broadcasting Group, Inc., the station airs an urban adult contemporary/ talk/ sports radio format, ...

; both stations were sold on November 30, 1987 by Lake Erie Radio Company, owned by

Art Modell Arthur Bertram Modell (June 23, 1925 – September 6, 2012) was an American businessman, entrepreneur and National Football League team owner. He owned the Cleveland Browns franchise for 35 years and established the Baltimore Ravens franchis ...

and

Al Lerner Alfred Lerner (May 8, 1933 – October 23, 2002) was an American businessman. He was best known as the chair of the board of credit-card giant MBNA and the owner of the Cleveland Browns of the National Football League. He was also a past presid ...

, to the Independent Group Limited partnership, owned by Tom Embrescia, Larry Pollock, and Tom Wilson.

Soft Rock 102.1

By the mid-1980s, WDOK's beautiful music format had brightened, with more vocals being played from such "

soft rock Soft rock is a form of rock music that originated in the late 1960s in Southern California and the United Kingdom which smoothed over the edges of singer-songwriter and pop rock, relying on simple, melodic songs with big, lush productions. S ...

" artists such as

James Taylor James Vernon Taylor (born March 12, 1948) is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist. A six-time Grammy Award winner, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000. He is one of the List of best-selling music artists, best-sell ...

and

Elton John Sir Elton Hercules John (born Reginald Kenneth Dwight; 25 March 1947) is a British singer, pianist and composer. Commonly nicknamed the "Rocket Man" after his 1972 hit single of the same name, John has led a commercially successful career a ...

. Ratings remained high, but the format attracted mostly older listeners in advertiser-unfriendly demographics and not the younger audiences courted by advertisers. So WDOK made the final and complete switch to a

soft adult contemporary Adult contemporary music (AC) is a form of radio-played popular music, ranging from 1960s vocal and 1970s soft rock music to predominantly ballad-heavy music of the present day, with varying degrees of easy listening, pop, soul, R&B, quiet sto ...

format in 1987 with Sue Wilson as program director. The station promoted its new AC format with TV commercials announcing that it was "coming out of the elevator" (as in "elevator music"). WDOK initially positioned itself midway between beautiful music (which continued for a few more years on WQAL) and the mainstream AC format played on

WLTF WLTF is a radio station licensed to Martinsburg, West Virginia. Owned by the West Virginia Radio Corporation, it broadcasts an Adult Contemporary format. Its signal covers the "four state" region, east into Washington, DC, south to Luray, Virg ...

and

WMJI WMJI (105.7 MHz) – branded ''Majic 105.7'' – is a commercial FM radio station licensed to Cleveland, Ohio, serving Greater Cleveland and much of surrounding Northeast Ohio. It is owned by iHeartMedia and broadcasts a classic hits r ...

New 102/Star 102

On January 9, 2012, WDOK debuted a new and more up tempo playlist (going from Soft AC to more mainstream AC), re-branded as "The New 102", complete with an updated

logo A logo (abbreviation of logotype; ) is a graphic mark, emblem, or symbol used to aid and promote public identification and recognition. It may be of an abstract or figurative design or include the text of the name it represents as in a wo ...

and imaging. On November 13, 2012, WDOK moved from its longtime studio home at One Radio Lane, off East Saint Clair Avenue in

, to the

on Euclid Avenue, also Downtown. Sister station WQAL joined WDOK in the move; as a result, all four Cleveland

CBS Radio CBS Radio was a radio broadcasting company and radio network operator owned by CBS Corporation and founded in 1928, with consolidated radio station groups owned by CBS and Westinghouse Broadcasting/Group W since the 1920s, and Infinity Broad ...

stations are now located in the same building. Longtime WDOK morning host "Trapper" Jack Elliot announced on December 19, 2012 that the station had opted not to renew the contracts of both he and cohost Jim McIntyre, much to the dismay of many listeners. On April 3, 2015, WDOK rebranded as "Star 102". On February 2, 2017, CBS Radio announced it would merge with Entercom. The merger was approved on November 9, 2017, and was consummated on the 17th.

Christmas music

Traditionally, WDOK plays

Christmas music Christmas music comprises a variety of genres of music regularly performed or heard around the Christmas season. Music associated with Christmas may be purely instrumental, or, in the case of carols or songs, may employ lyrics whose subject ...

throughout the

holiday season The Christmas season or the festive season (also known in some countries as the holiday season or the holidays) is an annually recurring period recognized in many Western and other countries that is generally considered to run from late November ...

under the brand "Christmas 102", usually beginning around mid-November. In December 2018, after the station did its annual switch to all Christmas music, WDOK decided to stop playing the well-known 1944 Christmas song ''

Baby, It's Cold Outside "Baby, It's Cold Outside" is a popular song written by Frank Loesser in 1944 and popularized in the 1949 film '' Neptune's Daughter''. While the lyrics make no mention of a holiday, it is commonly regarded as a Christmas song owing to its winter ...

'', saying the lyrics seemed inappropriate in a time of the #MeToo movement, with increasing sensitivity and awareness of sexual manipulation and harassment of women. The station's move sparked national, and even international, attention and controversy.

Current programming

The weekday schedule includes WDOK personalities Jen Toohey and Tim Richards (mornings), Liz Campbell (middays), Glenn Anderson (afternoons), and Jim Hart (evenings). WDOK is also the Cleveland affiliate for ''America's Greatest Hits with

Scott Shannon Michael Scott Shannon (born July 25, 1947) is an American radio disc jockey who hosted the morning show for WCBS-FM in New York City from 2014 to 2022 as well as ''Scott Shannon Presents America's Greatest Hits'' which is syndicated nationally wi ...

'', which is heard on the weekends. The HD2

digital subchannel In broadcasting, digital subchannels are a method of transmitting more than one independent program stream simultaneously from the same digital radio or television station on the same radio frequency channel. This is done by using data compres ...

broadcasts an

adult album alternative Adult album alternative (also triple-A, AAA, or adult alternative) is a radio format. See pages 9 and 10Mills, Joshua. "A New Radio Music Format: Rock for Prosperous Adults" New York Times, Feb 28 1994, p. 2. ProQuest. Web. Accessed September 4, 2 ...

format under the brand "The Coffee Shop".

References

External links

* *
Cleveland Broadcast Radio Archives: WDOK timeline
{{Entercom 1954 establishments in Ohio Mainstream adult contemporary radio stations in the United States Radio stations established in 1954 DOK Audacy, Inc. radio stations