Courtesy of longtime Contributor Tony Impieri, here’s a ‘new’ aircheck featuring Sue O’Neal. It’s in high quality Stereo! Why is that important? Considering the sound of today’s compressed and over processed FM stations, this is very refreshing. I noticed, and I’m betting you will too, that you can hear how good WXLO sounds here. Great separation, not over compressed, and certainly no digital noise to clutter up the sound!
This was the last ‘quarter’ of 1979, and things were rapidly changing at WXLO. Note the use of jingles here, whereas in prior years there was just the one 99X shotgun jingle, these are a bit more melodic, especially at the top of the hour. In 1980, WXLO would abandon Top 40 for AC, and within a few short years, drop even that in favor of a very long stint as Urban WRKS. Today, you’ll not hear any music, just non-stop Sports as New York’s FM ESPN outlet.
It might be just your silly webmaster but the music was so good in late 1979! It may be scoped, but this might convince you to find these songs and listen all the way through.
Find today’s WXLO (Fitchburg/Worcester, Massachusetts) right HERE.
Judging by the comments of summer, Blondie in Central Park, and Yankees vs. Mariners, this sounds more like July 11, 1979.
Was Sue O’Neill the first female air personality at “99-X”??
My submission indicated that it was from the summer of 79 (no specific date)…Not sure where October 30th came from.
Paulie was the first woman jock on WXLO. And es, this is clearly from the Summer of ’79. After the Last Summer promotion ended, WXLO discontinued its 99-X moniker and went AC.
Paulie was the first female jock on 98.7 FM. You can find more information at //www.musicradio77.com/WOR-FM/sked.html
re the introductory comment: It wasn’t even that long before WXLO went Urban. WXLO modified its Top 40 format to AC sometime in early 1980; it went to an Urban format in September 1980–when it was still WXLO. The station changed its call letters to WRKS and name from FM 99 WXLO to 98.7 Kiss FM the following August. It remained Urban for 30 1/2 years, the last 17 as an Urban AC station, until mid-spring 2012. It entered into and LMA with ESPN’s owners and switched to the sports format of ESPN Radio. (Longtime competitor WBLS, which also flipped from mainstream Urban to Urban AC in 1995, bought the intellectual property of WRKS, then moved two of the latter’s deejays and the hosts of WRKS’ Sunday African-American-oriented call-in talk show to WBLS.)