Jimmy Jam, Hot 99.9 WHXT Easton/Allentown PA | July 15, 1991
Feb 16, 2010 
2 Comments
We don’t know much about Easton PA (as with many lesser markets), but this is a good sounding Top 40 at the end of the 80s CHR era. By ’92, grunge and rock would take over much of the landscape… but this is a rhythmic, 80s-imaged CHR and it is good to hear!
Added by Lance Venta: This aircheck is about 6 weeks before the station would become “Oldies 99.9″ WODE. The demise of WHXT would also lead to its primary CHR competitor “Laser 104.1″ WAEB-FM to rebrand as “B104″, a name it would keep to this day.
From our Anonymous Contributor archives.
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Just wanted to add some more info to what Lance had posted:
The frequency (99.9) was once WEEX-FM, a once time stand-alone FM and later sister station to AM Top 40 WEEX. At the time, both owned by the Easton Express newspaper. WEEX-FM simulcasted with the AM until the FCC rules changed in the late 60s, limitinf the hours that AM/FM combos could simulcast. WEEX-FM eventually became WQQQ with an automated B/EZ listening format. The calls were chosen because the lower case “q” looked similer to the number “9″ as in their frequency.
WQQQ kept the format until early 1983 when the station was sold to new ownership. Since there was no Top 40 in the market at the time (both WEEX and one-time rival WAEB-AM were AC at the time), the format was changed to Top 40 as Q100. Q100 eventually became one of the top stations in the market and had the whole Top 40 format to itself until WAEB-FM flipped from AC to Top 40 as Laser 104.1 in 1987. While WAEB-FM’s format change didn’t have an immedate impact on Q100, a tower transmission line fire knocked Q100 off the air for several weeks over the summer of 1988, allowing Laser 104.1 to beat them in the ratings.
This event, plus controversy from a longtime morning man named Uncle Bob, left Q100 with a negative image in the market. In 1989, the station was sold to new ownership and flipped to Dance CHR as Hot 99.9. Hot couldn’t make a dent in the ratings with the Dance format, so the station adjusted to Mainstream CHR after several months. Despite the changes, the station still had signal problems and a limited promotional budget and gave up the format in August of 1991, becoming WODE with an Oldies format. Ironically, the station in its last month as a CHR had finally beaten WAEB-FM in the ratings by 2/10ths of a point. If they had held on just a little bit longer (and had a better promotional budget), Hot would probably still be around as a CHR.
Robyn
I will expand even more on Robyn’s comments. first, i think it’s important to put Easton, PA in its proper context. Easton is part of the Lehigh Valley — just over the border of Western New Jersey. As such; it, as well as Allentown and Bethlehem, are not that far from New York City and Philadelphia. In fact, where I grew up, (about 20 miles East of Easton in central NJ), I could easily pick up stations from NYC, Philly, and the Lehigh Valley. Because of their proximity to such huge radio markets, Lehigh Valley stations tended to have a big-market sound.
I would be willing to bet that the original dance format of Hot 99.9 was modeled after Hot 97 in NYC. As Robyn pointed out, they soon found out that the Lehigh Valley really isn’t a dance market — hence the move toward CHR.
As for B104, I think they were already in the process of moving away from the Laser moniker. The reason why they called themselves Laser in the first place was because they played almost all of their music from compact disc. they promoted this fact very heavily, especially in 1987 when they first started using that name. It was such a phenomenon in fact, that Dorney Park changed the name of one of their rollercoasters to The Laser. by 1991 though, compact discs were much more common place so the Laser name was kind of dated. I think WAEB FM would have changed their name to B104 whether 99.9 had flipped, or not.