By RODNEY HO/ rho@ajc.com, originally filed Friday, January 1, 2016
Hoping to revive a brand that was once the pinnacle of rock success in the 1990s, Cumulus Atlanta has brought back 99X at 98.9 as of midnight today.
This is a full-circle moment for 99X, which was briefly on the 98.9 signal back in 2011 before it was moved briefly to 97.9, then taken off the air completely in August, 2012.
This 99X appears to be focused on the past five or six years and won't be playing music from its glory days.
"99X will once again be Atlanta's unique source for new music discovery," said Program Director Greg Ausham in a press release. "99X will be a station rooted solidly in today's artists and devoted to looking ahead toward what's next musically."
99X was the hotshot rock station after it debuted in 1992 and for about a decade was a dominant force in town, introducing new music with an attitude of love and admiration. When rock itself splintered in the 2000s, 99X lost its mojo and its 99.7 signal to the more popular top 40 station Q100. In early 2008, it was bumped to an online only format but brought back in 2009 to 97.9, then 98.9 in 2011. For the past three years, the station has been nonexistent.
Cumulus hasn't shown patience for any format at this signal, which isn't all that strong. Over five years, besides 99X, it's been active rock (the Bone), a Christian/country hybrid (The Walk), oldies (True Oldies/Good Time Oldies), country (Nash ICON) and for a week, in a feint, adult contemporary (Warm). No station format has lasted longer than 15 months.
The press release described the strategy for the 2016 version of 99X:
Twenty-One Pilots, The 1975, Cold War Kids and Cage The Elephant share the airwaves with Taylor Swift, 5 Seconds of Summer and Justin Bieber on some stations, and the music of a past generation on others. 99X is here to give music mavens their favorite established artists and a voice to what's NEXT: Saint Motel, The Wombats, Catfish and the Bottlemen and the countless to come.
Here's a sample hour:
8:50 a.m. "Unsteady" X Ambassadors
8:53 a.m. "Lampshades on Fire" Modest Mouse
8:56 a.m. "Sometime Around Midnight" The Airborne Toxic Event
9:00 a.m. "Harlem" New Politics
9:03 a.m. "First" Cold War Kids
9:06 a.m. "The Wolf" Mumford & Sons
9:10 a.m. "Stolen Dance" Milky Chance
9:13 a.m. "Cigarette Daydreams" Cage the Elephant
9:17 a.m. "Trip Switch" Nothing But Thieves
9:20 a.m. "I'm Only Joking" KONGOS
9:24 a.m. "Lights On" Big Grams
9:28 a.m. "Mercy" Muse
9:32 a.m. "Breezeblocks" alt-J
9:35 a.m. "Ex's & Oh's" Elle King
9:39 a.m. "Roots" Imagine Dragons
9:42 a.m. "Lonely Boy" The Black Keys
9:45 a.m. "Don't Wait Up" Robert DeLong
9:48 a.m. "I Am" AWOLNATION
The format is similar to X107.1, an alternative rock station that lasted just a year before going country a few months ago.
Rock has not been a terribly hot format lately in Atlanta. All three rock stations in 2015 lost ratings share from the previous year: the two classic rock stations 97.1/The River and Rock 100.5 plus the alternative rock station Radio 105.7, which plays a few new cuts but focuses mostly on older tunes from the 1990s and 2000s. The three stations receive a smaller collective share of the listening audience than V-103 all by itself.
My guess is a lot of rock fans have moved to Sirius/XM, which has a lot of rock options, or services such as Google Music and Spotify.
There has not been an Atlanta station to focus so heavily on new rock music since Project 96.1, which became a top 40 station in 2012.
Of course, bringing back a radio station name doesn't mean Cumulus can bring back 99X's personalities or the state of being when the station was popular. And the music mix clearly is not meant to draw old 99X listeners who still love to hear Green Day, Bush and Nirvana. They'd have to go to Rock 100.5 or Radio 105.7 for those acts.
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