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FM radio in Chicagoland

For those of you that are "rock music oriented", you might want to try tuning in 99.9 on your dial. While the call letters are WRZA, they bill themselves as "The 9 FM". This station was recently purchased and changed formats. What was a Peotone / Kankakee based Mexican station is now a Park Forest based "rock" station. As to their format, they say it best. That is, "we play anything".

While this type of format ( or "lack of format" ) could be a real mess of thrown together music, the station is being run by many "old school" FM DJ's that you'll surely recognize. Names like Sky Daniel's from the Loop ( WLUP ) of late 70's / early 80's vintage, Mitch Michael's from the Loop & WCKG, Johnny Mars of WXRT, etc... are all on board and offer a great diversity of flavours.

From what i can gather, this station went on the air in the middle of June. Somehow, i just found them today. As such, i have to wonder how many others haven't found them yet. Given the fact that i've actually been VERY happy with the musical selections / diversity that i've heard for the last 8+ hours, i wanted to turn others onto this station. I've heard everything from Patti Smith to Snow Patrol to Bruce Springsteen to The Hives to Jimmy Buffet to Queens of the Stone Age to The Cure to Joan Jett to Metallica to Robert Palmer to the Breederz. This is not to mention a few "sneak attacks" from the likes of Snoop Dog and ( i think ) Queen Latifah thrown in. While this might sound like a mess, it's so varied that you don't mind the drastic changes of styles. Even if you do, it doesn't last long and it is MUCH better than hearing the same songs over and over again every day or two / three days.

As a side note and even more of a benefit, this station is "introducing itself" to Chicagoland with 9,999 songs in a row without a commercial. Good tunes that are quite diverse with no commercials on broadcast FM is surely a pleasant change of pace. The fact that they state that they'll never play more than 3 minutes of commercial in a row OR more than 9 minutes of commercials in any given hour once they start promoting advertising is still MUCH better than the other "rock" stations in the area.

There is one drawback to this station though. Even though they are running 50,000 watts of broadcast power, their far southside location and lack of elevation really hurt their range. Some folks on the north side & suburbs may have a hard time picking this station up. That is, unless they've got a good tuner with a decent outdoor antenna. Check it out and see what you think. If you can find their website, which they've announced but i could never catch, please post it here. Sean
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PS... For those that are interested in such things, i found a pretty neat FM Radio based website that pertains to the Chicagoland area. It lists the various stations, their call letters, how much power they are transmitting, their locations, etc... I'm really quite surprised at how little power some of the stations are using, but then again, the FCC is now going by "EFP" or "Effective Radiated Power". This method takes into account antenna height along with actual transmitter power.

http://sprocket.sytes.net/radio/fmdial.html
sean
cpdunn99's avatar
cpdunn99
639 posts
 
I was listening again in the car today (came in GREAT in Wheaton, Glen Ellyn, Naperville). Like Beatlebum says, great song lists!! Hope they don't get too successful (!) and go conventional/corporate.
tfkaudio
591 posts
 
Thanks for pointing 99.9 out. I'm listening and enjoying. I think they can go far if they don't do what XRT did... I can barely listen to that station anymore (unless I need a good fix of commercials).
sean OP
6,231 posts
 
I agree about XRT. They are like the other stations now i.e. have their own format ( still wider than most ) but repeat the same songs every day / every other day or so. On top of that, they DO have WAY too many commercials.

As far as "9" goes, their variety is sometimes "TOO" wide for my tastes, but what the heck. Just because i don't like it doesn't mean that somebody else didn't request it. So long as they don't stick with the same specific type of music multiple songs in a row ( one "disco" or "country" tune is enough per batch ), it's not that bad. When you have Kelly Clarkson followed by a disco tune followed by a country tune, it's time to change the station. While diversity in music is great, you've got to draw the line somewhere in terms of "taste" and developing a sense of musical flow. Doing it for "shock value" and to display just how diverse your programing is gets kind of old real fast.

One thing that I have noticed is that they are already beginning to play certain bands on a very regular basis. For an example, you can hear "The Darkness" at least twice a day now. Two different songs, but that's still at least one song by them too many times per day and about 4 or 5 times too often per week. Even if both songs are "decent", do you really want to hear them both every day of the week??? After all, how many other MILLIONS of songs by millions of other bands are there that they could be playing? I'd rather here some of the good but lesser commercialized songs by well known bands, let alone good tunes from bands that never really made it big. This is one area where satellite radio really whips "The 9's" ass....

Along those same lines, has anybody else noticed that they don't play much music from the punk / new wave era of 77 - 85 or so i.e. not even the "commercial stuff" that made it onto the radio? I'm talking about "mellow" stuff like Elvis Costello, Devo, early Talking Heads, Gary Numan, XTC, Nick Lowe, English Beat, etc... I'm not expecting to hear the Sex Pistols, Buzzcocks ( although they were the greatest "rockin' pop" band ever with phenomenally catchy hooks and rhythms ), Sham 69, etc... As such, this station does offer diversity, but it is still drastically lacking in some areas. It's good, but it could be better. Sean
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