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Champaign/Danville

A

amfmxm

Back to Chambana & Big D to visit family--first time racing along I-74 in three years.

As a WDWS alum, I'm still drawn to AM 1400, and with the exception of the plug-n-play network talk shit, they continue to do a great job of local news/sports/weather/talk. Turpin & Tate must be around 150 by now, but they've still got some game. There's a lot to be said for being owned by the damn newspaper.

WLRW still sounds very good, but it seems obvious that they're being nibbled at by the 10,000 variations of CHR/dance & rock in town on the younger side... DWS/HMS & WILL on the older side... and The Wixy Twins in their presumed target demo. Maybe Saga can turn it into another Wixy!

I'm one of them Danville people (DNL sounds great, ITY is on Life Support... 103 sounds fine, DAN just fills another little hole in the Great Conservative Network Lineup AM Coverage Map).

But the one I'm pissed off about is another one of my Alma Maters--99.1 WYXY, Savoy--the old WIAI. SAVOY? Savoy is just a bunch of tract houses and strip centers on the way to the airport! (Well, maybe WDWS is officially in Savoy--I'd have to check). Point is, 99.1 was licensed to a Real Community--Danville--and now they not only moved the SOB (well, the tower is still at Oakwood), they've reduced it to nothing more than a tagalong to 100.3. Grrr... (yeah, I know I'm a year to two late on this. But, hey, I was busy)!

What an insult to Danville! Hell, make 'em get the tower out of Vermilion County!
 
You almost sound like AFRN alumni... I give you the nickname "Sarge"... Reality is that tower location and C.O.L. is just a way to get the station on... Not much to listeners where the first stop in the road is, as the community of license... Maybe we should change that teminology to "Stop or Sub-division In The Road"....As long as the signal is strong and such (The tower in Vermilion County, IN is just 3 to 4 miles from the City Limits of Danville)... It works... Have a good one..
 
I worked for Key (Key to death of good radio) and saw it headed towards someplace closer to Champaign while they owned it.

When the format went from Country unique to the market to classic rock or hits or whatever it was clear where the focus was. They believed the City could not support the stations it had, so move. A planned studio near the new town never developed Runs of tailgate parties at Football games were their main attempt at breaking the market.

Such a great signal to have no focus.
 
Skip, you're maybe a little cornfused. Oakwood--the site of 99.1's stick--is in Vermilion County, Illinois (Danville is the county seat), not Vermillion County, Indiana (two Ls). I'm 45-years familiar with the City of License issue and am painfully aware how it's been abused over the past few decades. And the abandonment of Danville for no compelling reason--if they had moved the antenna to the WIXY stick halfway to C-U, for instance--just reeks of half-baked stupidity. It's not like Danville couldn't use another very well-run radio station that could also cherry-pick accounts from Champaign...

Chief, I agree--they've really dropped the ball on this one. Odd for Saga, which otherwise has historically been a good operator. Perhaps an example of snagging one more FM than you really need... and then having to do something with it!
 
Chief, Who's antenna is that off US-136 and Indiana-63 on the west side of the highway, across from the Pilot Truck Stop?
 
Another ex-Chambana broadcaster here. We've been gone from town about 11 years now, but return each year to see friends at the station and the community, and attend a UI football game (plan to go to the UI/Wisconsin game this year).

At least, WYXY is carrying on in the tradition of WIAI, which was a country station from its initial sign-on (according to my notes, on 3/10/70).

They're my own personal tastes, but I bemoan the lack of an oldies station in the area when I visit. I miss the old WKIO, which was a fine oldies station under the helm of Mike Haile. WCFF, which replaced it, doesn't cut it for me: they play "whatever the Chief wants," but my tastes apparently differ from his.

Funny -- 99.1 did try an oldies format for a brief time maybe 7-8 years ago (as WXTT, I think), but it didn't last.
 
Hey, Alex. If you take this Illinois thread back three years (5 or 6 pages) you'll see a parallel topic called "A visit to Danville & C-U"--from my last visit to Picturesque & Historic East Central Illinois. At that time 99.1 was indeed WXTT ("Exit?") and part of the discussion was trying to figure out exactly what the hell they were trying to do. Seemed like it was supposed to be "Adult Hits" and WCFF was supposed to be "Classic Rock"--or was it the other way around? Anyway, the audience apparently agreed that they were too much alike... or that 99.1 was kind of a mess. Thus, "Wixy Classic."

And, yes, you're right. The older Country tunes do sort of represent a return to WIAI Roots. I had momentarily forgotten that I was actually one of WIAI's original jocks--a part-timer--when they signed on in 1968 or '69. IIRC, they were just sort of flirting with Country at the time, but quickly went whole hog into it. I remember that Ken Ball was a key player as PD at their height, which might have been in the eighties. I'd have to dig into the history books to be sure.

The current format seems to be a Saga product, borrowing from Joel Raab's "Country Legends" copyrighted approach, but varying the theme enough not to get sued. On the other hand, it struck me as possibly voice-tracked--maybe by jocks at other Saga properties--but it did not strike me as anything "live and Local." But maybe I just didn't listen long enough to hear them talking about local stuff or interact with local listeners. Just sounded canned to me. And I personally thought the music mix was sort of odd, too--like maybe the programmer might not be all that familiar with the music...not bad, but just a little off. Probably just me.
 
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