But, another important reason why Mr. Hillebrand created WMHE was to transmit the new Muzak subscription service to businesses and restaurants in the Toledo area.

In the early 1970s, Mr. Hillebrand wanted to expand his Muzak coverage area and constructed a much larger transmitter at a new site near Perrysburg, Ohio.

It consisted of Dave Deppish (mornings), Mark Howell (middays), Mike O'Mara (evenings), and Larry Weseman (nights).

In the spring of 1975, Toledo's newest album oriented rock (AOR) station debuted with The Doobie Brothers "Listen to the Music".

The station gained in popularity when many of the stores that carried Muzak, would switch over to the main audio channel in order to pull in WMHE.

They included Dorien Pastor (founder of WIOT), John Fisher as the new morning man and program director (now at KHTP-Seattle), and Bob Thomas.

Following much anger from its listeners (and major damage to the station's sign out front) disco was dumped and the format was changed back to rock.

To compete better with then rival WRQN, 93Q, the station dropped the call letters WMHE in favor of WVKS and moved to an Adult Top 40 presentation.

The new "92.5 KISS FM" became a ratings powerhouse in Toledo (especially after WRQN left the CHR format to flip to Oldies in October 1991), consistently racking up 12+ shares in the double digits and challenging the market's longtime ratings leaders, country-formatted WKKO (K100) and rocker (and future sister station) WIOT.

The ratings boom came largely as a result of station manager Andy Stewart's decision to hire DJ's Denny Schaffer (mornings), Johny D (Afternoon Drive) and Billy Michaels (nights).