Month: January 2000
“The City 97.9″ flips from Jazz/AC to Rhythmic CHR”Wild 97.9”
This station had been KTNT and at 97.7 since 1988. It moved to 97.9 to boost its power to 6,000 watts. One year before the flip, then-owner Caribou Broadcasting, relaunched it as KCYI “The City 97.9” making it a Urban AC/Jazz hybrid. Caribou was bought by Citadel Broadcasting (along with four other stations in Oklahoma City) in January of 2000. On Monday, January 24 at noon, the station began stunting with a computerized voice counting down. Along with the countdown were jokes and jabs at the competition. Examples: “Linda Cavanaugh is a fox.” (She is a longtime news anchor at KFOR-TV 4 in Oklahoma City) “Tell someone about this. In fact, someone tell Mike McCoy” (McCoy is the long time program director of CHR KJYO “KJ-103”) “Jeff Couch ...
102.9 WMXQ becomes All-80’s “102-9 the Point”
What better way to represent a new year/decade/century/millennium than to live in the past? During the second half of the year 2000, that was the attitude adopted by a growing number of radio companies as the “All-80’s” format (focusing on Rock and Alternative selections of that decade) began appearing rapidly across the country. Cox Broadcasting had already debuted this format under the name “106-9 the Point” in Houston. With WMXQ struggling as Hot AC “Mix 103”, Cox decided to bring All-80’s to Jacksonville…following an automated countdown, on November 1, 2000, at 5:00 pm, “102-9 the Point, The Best of the 80’s and More” was born.
1540 WDCD changes from Religious to Standards “Legends 1540” WPTR
WPTR, one of the most known calls in Albany radio history. In 1960’s and 70’s, it was one of Albany’s two major Top 40 stations (along with 980 WTRY), when Top 40 became an FM format WPTR went to country and was dominant in that field. In 1995, Albany Broadcasting sold the station to Crawford Broadcasting, which flipped it to religious WDCD. By 1999, Crawford Broadcasting began dabbling in secular broadcasting with the “Legends” standards format on their AM stations, and with Albany lacking a Standards station (after 94.5 WABY-FM became Soft AC WKLI), the space there was to launch. Going on heritage, 1540 returned to its original calls and after a week off the air for maintenance and upgrades launched standards “Legends 1540” on January 10, 2000 (t...
103.9 KPTY relaunches as Rhythmic CHR “Party Radio @ 103.9”
Following the change from “Arizona’s Party Station” to “Party Radio @ 103.9”, KPTY’s ratings fell into the dreaded 1-share range. There were numerous reasons for the mediocre ratings. Format-wise, Party Radio @ 103.9 began as what was described as “Extreme CHR” — playing hip-hop and modern rock (including a lot of cutting-edge selections) without the “in-between” music that defines most regular Mainstream CHRs (i.e. “pure pop” and dance music). It eventually dropped the hip-hop product in favor of “Extreme Rock”. Mancow Mueller’s syndicated “Mancow’s Morning Madhouse” show was also brought aboard. After dipping to a low 1 share, the end was near. During the final week of 1999, ...
