November 7, 2002 — Lorain County radio station, WDLW 1380AM will be changing its program format to "Oldies" beginning this Friday morning, November 8th at 8:00am. Featuring popular hit music from the fifties, sixties, and very early seventies known as "good times rock and roll", there will also be a heavy emphasis on local news with morning and afternoon newscasts airing at ten minutes before and twenty minutes after each hour.

WDLW, licensed to the city of Lorain, first began broadcasting in December 1969 as WLRO. In the 1980's, the call letters were changed to WRKG, and finally in 1998 to WDLW. Over the years, the formats have changed several times including "Top 40", "County", "Big Band", "Religious", "Ethnic", and most recently "Spanish".

WDLW is owned and operated by Doug and Lorie Wilber. Mr. Wilber's family built another local station, WOBL 1320AM in 1971 and has operated it for over 30 years. Doug Wilber assumed management of WDLW in December, 2001, completing the purchase in March of this year. For the past four years, WDLW has been playing Spanish music. When asked why the format was changing, Mr. Wilber said "While the station has been popular in the Hispanic and Latino community, we weren't having much success selling advertising to businesses outside of the city of Lorain. Since the advertising revenue wasn't sufficient to support the Spanish format, we needed to find one that could be operated profitably. There is another Spanish radio station in the area and I'm not sure this market is big enough to support two full time Spanish stations. We will be keeping our Spanish programming on Sunday afternoons from 2:00pm until 9:00pm during which time we will feature classic Spanish oldies."

When WDLW changes its format on Friday morning, it will be known as "Kool Kat Oldies" 1380AM, playing on a phrase that was popular in the late fifties and early sixties. Oldies is one of the top radio formats in the country, but there is currently only one Cleveland station serving this audience. Mr. Wilber said "Our intention is to serve Lorain County with fun music from the fifties, sixties, and very early seventies, plus offer more complete local news. To do that, we have hired Cleveland newscaster Brian Engle, formerly of WTAM as Director of News Operations for both WDLW and WOBL."

For more information, contact Douglas B. Wilber, General Manager WOBL Radio, Inc., WDLW Radio, Inc. 440-774-1320.