KOAI (95.1 FM) is a

commercial Commercial may refer to: * (adjective for) commerce, a system of voluntary exchange of products and services ** (adjective for) trade, the trading of something of economic value such as goods, services, information or money * a dose of advertising ...

radio station Radio broadcasting is the broadcasting 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 rad ...

, licensed to

Sun City West, Arizona Sun City West is an Unincorporated area#United States, unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) in Maricopa County, Arizona, Maricopa County, Arizona, United States. The population was 25,806 at the 2020 United States census, 2 ...

, and serving the

Phoenix metropolitan area The Phoenix metropolitan area, also known as the Valley of the Sun, the Salt River Valley, metro Phoenix, or The Valley, is the largest metropolitan statistical area in the Southwestern United States, with its largest principal city being the c ...

. The station is owned by Riviera Broadcasting, a

subsidiary A subsidiary, subsidiary company, or daughter company is a company (law), company completely or partially owned or controlled by another company, called the parent company or holding company, which has legal and financial control over the subsidia ...

of the

Yucaipa Companies The Yucaipa Companies, LLC is an American private equity firm founded in 1986 by Ronald Burkle. It specializes in a private equity and venture capital, with a focus on middle-market companies, growth capital, industry consolidation, leveraged ...

. It broadcasts an

oldies Oldies is a term for musical genres such as pop music, rock and roll, doo-wop, surf music from the second half of the 20th century, specifically from around the mid-1950s to the 1980s, as well as for a radio format playing this music. Since 2 ...

and classic hits

radio format A radio format or programming format (not to be confused with broadcast programming) describes the overall content broadcast on a radio station. The radio format emerged mainly in the United States in the 1950s, at a time when Radio broadcasting, ...

, featuring mostly hits from the 1960s, 70s and 80s. It primarily competes with

Audacy Audacy, previously known as Radio.com, is a free broadcast and Internet radio Computing platform, platform developed by the namesake company Audacy, Inc. (formerly known as Entercom). The Audacy platform functions as a Recommender system, mus ...

-owned 94.5

KOOL-FM KOOL-FM (94.5 MHz branded ''Big 94.5'') is a commercial classic hits radio station in Phoenix, Arizona, owned by Audacy, Inc. ''Big 94.5'' features mostly hits of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. KOOL-FM's studios are located in downtown Phoenix, a ...

, which concentrates on 1980s hits, with some 70s and 90s titles. KOAI has an

effective radiated power Effective radiated power (ERP), synonymous with equivalent radiated power, is an IEEE standardized definition of directional radio frequency (RF) power, such as that emitted by a radio transmitter. It is the total power in watts that would ha ...

(ERP) of 41,000

watt The watt (symbol: W) is the unit of Power (physics), power or radiant flux in the International System of Units (SI), equal to 1 joule per second or 1 kg⋅m2⋅s−3. It is used to quantification (science), quantify the rate of Work ...

s. The

transmitter In electronics and telecommunications, a radio transmitter or just transmitter (often abbreviated as XMTR or TX in technical documents) is an electronic device which produces radio waves with an antenna (radio), antenna with the purpose of sig ...

is in Crown King, Arizona, about 50 miles northwest of Phoenix, giving KOAI a rimshot signal in the metro area. Programming is also heard on 250-watt

FM translator A broadcast relay station, also known as a satellite station, relay transmitter, broadcast translator (U.S.), re-broadcaster (Canada), repeater ( two-way radio) or complementary station (Mexico), is a broadcast transmitter which repeats (or tr ...

94.9 K235CB in Chandler. The translator is fed by 103.9

KZON KZON (103.9 FM) is a commercial radio station licensed to Gilbert, Arizona, and broadcasting to the Phoenix metropolitan area. It simulcasts an Rhythmic Hot AC radio format with co-owned KMVA 97.5 FM Dewey-Humboldt, Arizona, as "Hot 97.5 ...

- HD2. The

studio A studio is a space set aside for creative work of any kind, including art, dance, music and theater. The word ''studio'' is derived from the , from , from ''studere'', meaning to study or zeal. Types Art The studio of any artist, esp ...

s and offices are on 7th Street in Midtown Phoenix.

History

95.1 went on the air in 1996, licensed to Winslow, broadcasting from Mingus Mountain and covering areas of Northern Arizona. It was owned by Ted Tucker's Desert West Air Ranchers Corporation. Tucker moved the station in 2000 to the Crown King site (along with a change of city of license to Mayer, later changed again to Sun City West). It was sold in 2004 to Sun City Communications for $18.7 million. The new ownership flipped KFMR from a simulcast of Tucker's KCDX to the Hispanic rhythmic ("hurban") format as KVIB "Latino Vibe". As Latino Vibe, KVIB played a youth-oriented radio format playing both Spanish-language and English-language pop. The station's mix of music targeted the Valley's burgeoning young Latino population, particularly long-time residents who can speak English but prefer Spanish. On January 23, 2014, KVIB changed its format to

Spanish language Spanish () or Castilian () is a Romance languages, Romance language of the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family that evolved from the Vulgar Latin spoken on the Iberian Peninsula of Europe. Today, it is a world language, gl ...

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 1980s to the present day, with varying degrees of easy listening, pop, soul ...

, branded as "Solamente Éxitos" with a bilingual presentation. On August 13, 2014, at noon, 95.1 flipped to

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 1980s to the present day, with varying degrees of easy listening, pop, soul ...

as ''95.1 The Oasis'', and nine days later, the 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 as ...

to KOAI. The last song of the Spanish AC format was " Royals" by

Lorde Ella Marija Lani Yelich-O'Connor (born 7 November 1996), known professionally as Lorde ( ), is a New Zealand singer and songwriter. She is known for her unconventional style of pop music and introspective songwriting, and has been referred to ...

with the first song on The Oasis being '' Cool Change'' by the

Little River Band Little River Band (LRB) are a rock band formed in Melbourne, Australia, in March 1975. The band achieved commercial success in both Australia and the United States. They have sold more than 30 million records; six studio albums reached the top ...

. The station played a

Christmas music Christmas music comprises a variety of Music genre, genres of music regularly performed or heard around the Christmas and holiday season, Christmas season. Music associated with Christmas may be purely instrumental, or in the case of Christmas ...

format for the 2014 holiday season, the second station in Phoenix after KESZ. On April 9, 2015, 95.1 gained an FM translator, K235CB 94.9 on South Mountain, (licensed to Chandler), and also began simulcasting on 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 compress ...

KEXX KEXX may refer to: * Davidson County Airport (ICAO code KEXX) * KZON, a radio station (103.9 FM) licensed to serve Gilbert, Arizona, United States, which held the call sign KEXX from 2010 to 2016 * KEXX, a REXX dialect included with KEDIT XED ...

. In May 2015, KOAI adjusted its

playlist A playlist is a list of video or audio files that can be played back on a media player, either sequentially or in a shuffled order. In its most general form, an audio playlist is simply a list of songs that can be played once or in a loop. ...

to include more up-tempo selections from the 1990s through the present time, while still retaining a gold/soft AC-lean. On June 5, 2015, while it was still a soft AC station, KOAI picked up

Delilah Delilah ( ; , meaning "delicate";Gesenius's ''Hebrew-Chaldee Lexicon'' ; ) is a woman mentioned in the sixteenth chapter of the Book of Judges in the Hebrew Bible. She is loved by Samson, a Nazirite who possesses great strength and serves as t ...

's syndicated evening radio show. Delilah continued on the station through two additional format changes, first to a mainstream

station, and then to classic hits. Delilah was discontinued on August 25, 2017, with evenings featuring more music. On September 30, 2019, at 5PM, after playing " Addicted to Love" by Robert Palmer, KOAI changed its format from classic hits to a new format concept for

baby boomers Baby boomers, often shortened to boomers, are the demographic cohort preceded by the Silent Generation and followed by Generation X. The generation is often defined as people born from 1946 to 1964 during the mid-20th century baby boom that ...

developed by veteran radio programmer John Sebastian. It originally blended pop, rock, soul, and country from a seven-decade span and branded as "The Wow Factor". The first song on The Wow Factor was "

Ride My See-Saw __NOTOC__ "Ride My See-Saw" is a 1968 single by the English progressive rock band the Moody Blues. It was written by the band's bassist John Lodge, and was first released on the Moody Blues' 1968 album ''In Search of the Lost Chord''. It was the s ...

" by

The Moody Blues The Moody Blues were an English rock band formed in Birmingham in May 1964. The band initially consisted of Graeme Edge (drums), Denny Laine (guitar/vocals), Mike Pinder (keyboards/vocals), Ray Thomas (multi-instrumentalist/vocals) and Clint W ...

.First Listen: KOAI (The Wow Factor) Phoenix
Radioinsight – October 2, 2019

References

External links

The Wow Factor website
* * {{Phoenix Radio OAI Classic hits radio stations in the United States