Atlanta-based Cumulus Media is hoping to give the once powerful brand name a boost by moving it to the stronger 100.5 signal from its previous home at 98.9, a significantly weaker signal where it played mostly new music. The new format harkens back to the original 99X from the 1990s.
Rodney Ho at ajc.com reports Rock 100.5 had been most recently an active rock station, a sound that was closer to what the long defunct 96rock used to be. But its Nielsen ratings had fallen steadily over the past couple of years and were a mere 1.2 rating in November, good for 20th place. In comparison, its closest rock rival 97.1/The River, with a stronger signal and a more broadly appealing sound, was No. 1 in the entire market with an 8.2 rating.
Since Friday evening, Rock 100.5 had dropped its regular format and started playing the Verve’s “Bittersweet Symphony” in loop and promised a change at 6 a.m. Monday with the line “Same as it ever was.”
The revival started with the Buggles’ “Video Killed the Radio Star,” the first video that aired on MTV in 1981 and during the first hour featured no on-air talent except traffic reports from Jones, playing mostly songs from the 1980s and 1990s by acts such as U2, Stone Temple Pilots, Flock of Seagulls and Collective Soul. In promos, it’s now dubbing itself “the original 99X.”
On Twitter, the station promised on-air staff on Jan. 3 so for the next month, it will just play music.
99X started at 99.7 in 1992 as the market’s first commercial alternative rock station after Leslie Fram and Brian Phillips discovered there was untapped potential. Within two years, it began pulling in big ratings numbers, riding the wave of grunge and other cool rock sounds including Bush, No Doubt, Green Day and R.E.M. A hot morning show called the Morning X featuring Steve Barnes, Fram and Jimmy Baron became a dominant force, capturing the Gen X zeitgeist.
In the 2000s, the station started losing steam when the music got harder and darker and management couldn’t figure out whether to try to keep its original listeners or go for a younger audience and tried to straddle. It didn’t work.
The original 99X officially ended with Green Day’s “Time of My Life (Good Riddance)” on Jan. 25, 2008 at 5:30 a.m. Since then, the 99X name was on-line only, then placed on a bunch of weaker signals, most recently 98.9. Top 40 station Q100, which had been on 100.5, moved to the more powerful 99.7 signal.
99X’s effective replacement Rock 100.5 brought back 96rock’s morning show The Regular Guys and mostly focused on a harder rock sound. For a time, it did okay and even after The Regular Guys imploded, its replacement morning show featuring Rickman and Jason Bailey had moments when it did extremely well.
But management dropped Bailey last year and ratings had only slipped further. A syndicated morning show out of D.C., Elliot in the Morning, launched earlier this year on Rock 100.5 didn’t take.
Brian Phillips, who started 99X three decades ago under a previous company Susquehanna, now runs Cumulus as chief content officer and had a strong hand in the station’s revival. It’s unclear who he will bring back as on-air staff but Axel Lowe, an afternoon host for 99X from 1993 until 2008 who has also been part of Rock 100.5 for most of its run, is likely to stay.
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