Young Country 99.5 in the 1990s

[Deleted User 15835]

I didn't grow up with country music, so it wasn't something I was too aware of until mid high school, when a friend I made introduced me to it. He was a little older then me and a grade ahead.

He used to give rides to school and back home, I remember him having 99.5fm on a lot. They played mostly more up-tempo music, not so much the sappy stuff. Artists like Clint Black, Garth Brooks, Sammy Kershaw, Alan Jackson and a few others. I was listening to 98.3 Nash Icon the other day and it made me thing about that. I went to a rural school district in Monroe County, so yeah country music was popular,

Now, I sort of remember The Fox but I have no recollection of WOW-FM, Wikipedia says the first song on Young County was Hal Ketchum-Small Town Saturday Night. I've heard WOW-FM was killed off with no warning, they went to commercial and never came back. Then Boom 99.5 was country.

[MotorCityRadioFreak]

I don't remember that, but my aunt was pissed when W4 Country went away. It was a very popular station with 45+ country fans at the time. My ex's mom was highly upset too. Just checked, and it was 2000. That makes sense because our carpool lady was obsessed with Alice FM.

[Deleted User 15835]

106.7 Flipped to Alice Labor day weekend 1999. I remember listening to Alice when I was going to Monroe Community College. It was really strange hearing non-country music on 106.7

[edj]

I remember WOW barely. I think they went into goofy loops before switching but that was nearly 30 years ago so memory may be off.
Dr. Don Carpenter was one of the few if not only holdovers.

[Mega Hertz]

I remember more goofy loops than I do of WOW-fm.

[Marcus]

I recall Wow-FM copying WWJ's every 10 minute weather and traffic updates and mixing it with Talk radio. If you wanted News you stayed with WWJ. For Talk radio WXYT had it on fulltime back then, and WJR either went in that direction or was about to very soon. They also had J.P. McCarthy and Tigers Baseball at that time.

WJR and WWJ must have both been in the top 10 in 1993. I'm not sure how WXYT was doing, but I wouldn't be surprised if they also beat Wow-FM.

Becoming a Country station had the opposite result. After W4 left 106.7 FM about five years later, WYCD was the winner and has now been around for almost three decades. I think they were owned by either CBS or Infinity around the turn of the Century.

[ChrisWL1980]

I was in seventh grade when they "killed The Fox" and introduced Wow-FM and then WYCD. During the fall of '92, my school bus driver typically played either Q95 or WHYT in the mornings, but on the ride home, it was 99.5 The Fox. I guess they figured The Fox was "safer" since it was more pop and less rap than WHYT. I don't recall a single one of my classmates ever claiming The Fox as their favorite station, though - it seemed everyone listened to WHYT or 89X. Anyway, I'm not sure if the bus driver didn't notice or didn't care about the format change because the bus radio on the drive home remained tuned to 99.5 even after the Wow switchover. But when Wow morphed into WYCD before the school year was over, the bus radio went to Q95 for the ride home as well. I guess the bus driver couldn't stomach country, LOL.

I don't remember where it was posted, but the only specific memory of Wow FM I have is from more than a decade after the station disappeared, when I happened upon an aircheck on the Internet of their afternoon host (I forget who it was) doing a retrospective of Detroit radio, with Art Vuolo Jr. as his guest host. The guests included the likes of Ted Richards and the late Tom Clay. It was a fascinating listen. One thing I specifically remember was they aired a lot of promos throwing shade at WWJ and WJR for being "dinosaurs" on the AM band and using clips of Steely Dan's "FM (No Static At All)."

Whether they really were serious about Wow FM or were just using it as the most elaborate smokescreen I've ever seen and planned to flip 99.5 to country all along, the ratings told the story: WJR, WWJ and WXYT were all in the Top 5 12+ in the Winter '93 ratings, with WJR at #1. WJR and WXYT slipped only slightly; WWJ actually increased slightly (12+). Wow FM tied for 22nd place with a 1.0 12+, a decrease of a full point from their last book as The Fox (Fall '92). Even AM graveyarder WQBH beat them. W4 had enjoyed Hee-Yooge ratings during all of 1992, capping off with a #1 finish 12+ with a 9.1 that fall, so they were ripe for competition.

My mom and sister were heavily into country music then and took to WYCD. Wherever we went, the car radio had to be on 99.5, especially if Dr. Don was on. I couldn't abide Billy Ray Cyrus every 45 minutes so I made a point of taking my Walkman with me on car rides. Little did I realize the country music of three decades later would be such garbage that I'd one day be nostalgic for the country music of 1993...

[Mega Hertz]

I recall Wow-FM copying WWJ's every 10 minute weather and traffic updates and mixing it with Talk radio. If you wanted News you stayed with WWJ. For Talk radio WXYT had it on fulltime back then, and WJR either went in that direction or was about to very soon. They also had J.P. McCarthy and Tigers Baseball at that time.

WJR and WWJ must have both been in the top 10 in 1993. I'm not sure how WXYT was doing, but I wouldn't be surprised if they also beat Wow-FM.

Becoming a Country station had the opposite result. After W4 left 106.7 FM about five years later, WYCD was the winner and has now been around for almost three decades. I think they were owned by either CBS or Infinity around the turn of the Century.

https://mibuzzboard.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?t=58187

Here's a thread I posted a couple years ago that will answer that EXACT question!

[Marcus]

That makes a few things clear.
1. Both WJR and WXYT had high ratings with Talk in 1993.
2. WYCD was still owned by Alliance.
3. Shamrock knew how to run W4 Country. The next company after them ran the station into the ground. This happened after the 1996 ownership limit change.

[SolidGoldDancers]

Alliance closed on WDFX mid-August 1993, flipped the call to WOWF Christmas eve of that year after they “killed the fox”.

WYCD didn’t take to the air until May 1994. It wasn’t far into 1996 that Infinity purchased all Alliance Broadcast properties, Mel Karmazin himself came and made the introductions.

WYCD and the Young Country format all started with John Hayes. You might remember him as the un-named NBC executive giving Pig Vomit grief over the David Letterman interview in Private Parts, and listed by name in the book. He had a prescient vision on the trajectory of country music in the 90’s. The story is that his young son heard it while tuning the radio and said “dad, rock and roll”.

They don’t make radio like that any longer, and they certainly do not make music like that either.

[Marcus]

Alliance closed on WDFX mid-August 1993, flipped the call to WOWF Christmas eve of that year after they “killed the fox”.

WYCD didn’t take to the air until May 1994. It wasn’t far into 1996 that Infinity purchased all Alliance Broadcast properties, Mel Karmazin himself came and made the introductions.

WYCD and the Young Country format all started with John Hayes. You might remember him as the un-named NBC executive giving Pig Vomit grief over the David Letterman interview in Private Parts, and listed by name in the book. He had a prescient vision on the trajectory of country music in the 90’s. The story is that his young son heard it while tuning the radio and said “dad, rock and roll”.

They don’t make radio like that any longer, and they certainly do not make music like that either.

At least not on the two regular broadcast bands.