WDIF-FM Scrapbook Collection

Collection

Identifier: MUSIC-014

Staff Only

Collection Overview

Abstract

The collection consists of 4 scrapbooks that cover WDIF’s personnel and audience information, achievements, and programming throughout the year.

Dates

Creation: 1980 - 1983

Extent

2 Cubic Feet (2 boxes)

Scope and Contents

The collection consists of 4 scrapbooks that cover WDIF’s personnel and audience information, achievements, and programming throughout the year in the early 1980s. These scrapbooks were compiled by WDIF employees for inclusion in application packets for yearly station awards, including the Station of the Year award from Billboard magazine.

The scrapbooks document the station personnel and management each year, and contain some information about station programming, including photographs and brief biographies of show hosts, information about music programming, descriptions of special programs or contests run by the station, information about companies that purchase advertisements on the station, and some information about station reach and audience demographics. WDIF had an active news team in the early 1980s, so major local and regional news stories covered by the team are featured in the scrapbooks, some with accompanying photographs. Some scrapbooks also include information on WDIF's community involvement, including community awards sponsored by the station and lectures, festivals, or other events in which the station or its employees participated.

Biographical / Historical

WDIF-FM was a music and news radio station owned and operated by Scrantland Communications out of Marion, Ohio on 94.3 FM; the station went on the air in 1975 and WDIF's first studios were located above a bank in downtown Marion. By 1980s, WDIF was a 3,000 Watt station reaching nearly 300,000 people in Marion and the surrounding cities of Delaware, Marysville, Mount Gilead, Upper Sandusky, and Kenton, among others. The station had moved to a new building near Marion in 1980, as well. The station played primarily adult contemporary music, with some Top 40 programming and had several well-known on-air personalities and regular morning and evening shows. WDIF also had an active news and pubic affairs department, running short "Weekend Desk" public affairs programs on weekends and a weekly "Meet The Media" interview show with prominent local leaders as well as live and pre-recorded news segments that regularly won awards from the Ohio Associated Press Broadcasters. While the target audience shifted slightly through the 1980s, the station largely tried to appeal to an audience aged 18-49, centering on listeners in their 30s.

In 1994 the station was sold to Burbach Broadcasting, which owned several other AM and FM stations in the Marion Ohio area.

Conditions Governing Access

Collection is open for research.

Conditions Governing Use

Researchers using this collection assume full responsibility for conforming to the laws of libel, privacy, and copyright, and are responsible for securing permissions necessary for publication or reproduction.