99X is back, well sort of!

Back in the 90’s the best radio station in Atlanta and one of the top stations in the country for my demographic was 99.7 or 99X. They were the pioneers of alternative rock on the radio and was a phenomenon in its heyday, drawing 500,000-plus listeners and at its peak, regularly ranked top 3 among 18 to 34 year olds and top 5 among 25 to 54 year olds. The format moved from Power 99, which played more top 40 pop artist, to 99X in 1992 when the grung movement started to rule. But when the 18-34 demo started to get bored with grung, the station tried to evolve by playing both alternative rock and heavy rock, which just didn’t work. So 15 months ago, they went Internet only and 99.7 became Q100. 99.7 still is Q100, and now 99X can be found on 97.9. But don’t expect to get a signal if you live too far outside of Atlanta, they are only broadcasting at 250 watts where as Q100 is broadcasting at 100,000 watts. That is not quite the same scale. So 99X is back just not nearly as powerful.

I personally don’t understand why there is not a good station in Atlanta that will play new music that appeals to my demographic. There are cities all across the country that play indy artist and non major label music. DaveFM is the closest thing we have and it still is a slave to the record companies. Maybe now that 99X is back on the air, between the two of them, we can get some decent radio. But I am not holding my breath! I will, however, dust off my old 99X card and see what they have going on now!