Frank “Bo” Wood Jr., the founder of WEBN and Cincinnati’s “Commissioner of Fun,” has died at 83.
WXVU is reporting that Wood died on July 29. The Cincinnati legend had been suffering from Alzheimer’s disease for several years.
Wood founded WEBN-FM with his father, Frank Wood Sr. in 1967. Frank Jr. nurtured it into a rock station that some have called the “zaniest” FM station in the country during the 60s, 70s, and 80s.
Jay Gilbert started at WEBN in 1974 and spent 38 years there, including what he calls the station’s golden age. He worked in various positions with an emphasis on DJ roles. He remembers Wood fondly.
“Frank was one of a kind, a visionary, a ringleader, a smart businessman, a prankster, and a friend,” Gilbert said. “His genius at WEBN was to hire talented people, then leave them alone, and then vouch for them when they did stuff that pissed people off. This city would be so different if not for him.”
Gilbert said in a December 2024 article tribute for Wood that although Wood’s illness had made him forget so many of the wild stunts the station had pulled, he and the people he hired transformed the radio station into “Cincinnati’s No. 1 frequency” that was beloved for so long.
“WEBN’s gorilla-sized ratings from the late 1980s have yet to be matched by anyone,” Gilbert wrote, attributing the ratings to Wood and the “smart” risks he took.
Tom Sandman worked at WEBN for 7 “really good years,” starting in 1975. He was there for the first Riverfest fireworks show and the launching of the station’s fame up next to radio giants like Boston’s WBCN.
After WEBN, Sandman went to work for WBCN. He credits Wood and his time at the Cincinnati station for that step.
“Bo spoiled me for life,” Sandman said. He was still in college when Wood hired him. After WEBN, Sandman said he had expected every other station to be this crazy, and that he found out that wasn’t true.
“He was one of the pioneers of FM Rock in the United States,” Sandman said. “He built a brand on being funny, creative, and a smart alec.”
Sandman remembers Wood as generous with his time, generous with his praise, and eccentric. Wood regularly had people from the station in his home.
His eccentricity, Sandman said, helped push WEBN through the competition of around a dozen other radio stations in the area at the time. A lot of people tried to copy Wood, but they couldn’t because Wood’s ideas came from his internal “whimsy.”
He encouraged people to make up products,
“There was nobody like him,” Sandman said.
Wood was serious about fun.
“Frank made fun much more than a three-letter word,” says Jaqui Brumm, who worked with Wood as WEBN’s vice president and general manager in a 2014 Enquirer story. “There wasn’t anything that he touched that wasn’t blown up into the maximum fun you could have. And it didn’t always mean getting in trouble.”
More often than not, he and his colleagues’ ideas were downright whimsical.
“The point is everybody likes to laugh,” Wood said in the article. “It brings people together. But sometimes you have to make it happen. You have to light a match once in a while … “That is a metaphor, you know.”
This story is developing.