Monday, October 03, 2005

An AC Eagle Flies in Mount Vernon

Yesterday, OMW bought a shortwave radio. We've occasionally owned one over the years, but this new one also turns out to be more than a decent performer on the FM band. And thus, from the OMW World Headquarters in northwest Akron - far from its usual range - we've been able to hear the steady stunting of WQIO/93.7 Mount Vernon most of the night. Through lots of interference, sure...it's not a local signal by any stretch of the imagination...but it was there. (It's now also the second radio here that picks up New Philadelphia's WJER/101.7 with little problem.)

Of course, when it counted, the end of the Bobby McFerrin-fest on WQIO just minutes ago was not clearly heard. It's Murphy's Law, Radio Observer Division, of course. Just when you NEED to hear something, it fades away! But we did catch enough to report on it...as a voice we assume to be BAS general manager Tom Klein introduced himself, and launched into the new format.

And that format is...well, we'll have to say adult contemporary, not far from the station's previous format. OMW heard the phrase "today's hits and yesterday's favorites". And somewhere in there, we heard the sound of a bird crowing. We'll be darned if we could pick up the actual NAME, so we'll assume it's "The Eagle".

And sure enough, since the phrase "today's hits and yesterday's favorites" is used on-air by the ABC 24 hour format "Hits and Favorites", and since we've heard that the station planned to use a full-time satellite format, we went to the ABC format's website and fed in 43050, the ZIP Code for Mount Vernon. And the following page, though it had an error, has a logo for "Eagle 93.7". Bingo!



Unfortunately, the signal that served us so well for catching "Don't Worry, Be Happy" through the static has now dropped off the dial here at OMW World Headquarters, so we'll have to fill in other details later...including the station's lineup and such, outside of the ABC format. Here's a tip for future stunting stations - Bobby McFerrin apparently helps your signal...

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The logo looks very similar to the one used for BAS' other Eagle in Fremont.

I would expect that just like Fremont three years ago, there are no local jocks and the station is taking the ABC AC feed 24/7.