102.7 WEBN streams classic rock staples alongside modern hard rock and active rock cuts straight out of Cincinnati, Ohio, and you can listen free right now on Radio Shuffle. Expect a mix that swings from Led Zeppelin and Van Halen to Breaking Benjamin and Shinedown, the kind of rotation built for a station that has never really stopped being a rock station since the summer of 1967.
A jazz station that got hijacked by rock and roll
WEBN did not start out as a rock station at all. Businessman Frank Wood Sr. signed the station on in August 1967 wanting a home for classical music and jazz, according to Cincinnati Magazine. His son, Frank "Bo" Wood, had other plans. Hosting a Saturday night show called "Jelly Pudding" under the alias Dr. Michael Bo Xanadu, Bo spun Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead for an audience of baby boomers who had outgrown Top 40 AM radio.
The show was too popular to ignore. WEBN gradually let the rock programming take over the schedule, turning into one of the country's early album oriented rock stations, a format built around full album cuts and deep tracks rather than three-minute singles, as Wikipedia's overview of the AOR format describes. Bo Wood would go on to run the station for decades, and when he died in 2025 at age 83, Inside Radio remembered him as the man who "made radio fun" in Cincinnati.
The Dawn Patrol and the golden age of FM radio wars
By the 1980s, WEBN's morning show had become appointment listening across Greater Cincinnati. The Dawn Patrol, anchored by Bo's daughter Robin Wood alongside Eddie Fingers, built a following on song parodies, fake commercials, and stunts like the Fools Parade every April, details chronicled in Cincinnati Magazine's retrospective on the station's 50th anniversary. Sports reporter Wildman Walker joined the crew in 1985, and the show's chemistry made it one of the most talked about programs in the city's radio history, part of what locals still call the FM radio wars of the era, per WVXU's look back at that period.
A Labor Day tradition born from a birthday party
WEBN's most visible legacy has nothing to do with the airwaves. In 1977, Frank "Bo" Wood asked the Rozzi family to put together a fireworks show as a gift to listeners for the station's tenth anniversary, and it never stopped. That show grew into Riverfest, the Western & Southern/WEBN Fireworks over the Ohio River, now a Labor Day weekend fixture that draws crowds in the hundreds of thousands, as WVXU reported around its 50th anniversary celebration in 2026. Local 12's coverage of the milestone show notes it remains one of the largest fireworks displays in the Midwest, complete with a rock and roll soundtrack that matches the station's identity.
Still a rock station at heart
WEBN eventually became the FM flagship of the Cincinnati Bengals Radio Network, but the music has stayed the constant through ownership changes and format tweaks over nearly six decades. Recent airchecks on Radio Shuffle have caught tracks like "Something Wicked" by Breaking Benjamin in the rotation, sitting comfortably next to the station's deep well of classic rock. For anyone who wants Cincinnati's longest-running rock station without hunting for an FM dial, WEBN streams free on Radio Shuffle any time.