NEW! The featured WWWW Doug Podell audio file, in its original and unrestored form was selected for today’s special aircheck “restoration” presentation.
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Newly restored! This selected audio recording was digitally remastered by Motor City Radio Flashbacks.
Audio was digitally enhanced by Motor City Radio Flashbacks
Shamrock Broadcasting purchased W4 in July 1979. The station is most remembered today as one of the early radio jobs for Howard Stern, who was brought in from Hartford, Connecticut, to host mornings, beginning April 21, 1980. However, W4 was one of four Detroit stations with an AOR format, and faced with increasing competition and rapidly falling ratings, management decided to make a change.
With no advance notice, Shamrock changed the station’s format to country music on January 18, 1981. At first, the DJs, including Stern, were kept on to play country hits. The station reportedly planned to brand Howard Stern as “Hopalong Howie,” which he declined after two weeks, moving to WWDC-FM in Washington, D.C. In the film “Private Parts”, Stern announces his departure in the middle of a song, claiming he didn’t understand country music.
The move to country music paid off; the Detroit radio market, the nation’s fifth largest at the time, had no FM country music station. In addition, Detroit and its suburbs had a sizable percentage of the population whose families hailed from the Southern United States and grew up with the genre. W4 Country’s first years coincided with the rise in popularity of country music, even outside the South. At the time of the country format’s launch, the immediate Detroit area’s only country music station was on AM, WCXI at 1130 kHz. WWWW became the first FM country station in Detroit since WCAR-FM’s and CKLW-FM’s brief tries at the format in the mid-1970s. As a result, WCXI’s ratings fell. By the early 1990s, AM 1130 was being used as a simulcast for W4.
“W4 Country” lasted almost two decades and did reasonably well in the ratings, under the leadership of programmer Barry Mardit, who joined the station in late 1981. The station posted a #1 finish in the Fall 1992 Detroit Arbitron radio ratings with an 8.7 share. The following year, the station gained a strong competitor in WYCD, causing WWWW’s ratings to decline. Recording artist Holly Dunn served as morning co-host on W4 Country during the late 1990s. Declining ratings and revenue led owners AM-FM (which became part of Clear Channel Communications in August 2000) to drop the country format at 6 p.m. on September 1, 1999. The final song played on “W4 Country” was “The Dance” by Garth Brooks, followed by “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
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Source and information, credit: WWWW Wikipedia
The featured WWWW Jingle package is property of JAM, Incorporated. The JAMS logo and brand is licensed and marketed by JAM Productions, Dallas.
Tom Clay WWWW aircheck date: Thursday, December 24, 1970
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NEW! A special THANK YOU to Dan Murphy, of Boston, MA, for recently donating this WWWW radio aircheck to Motor City Radio Flashbacks!
* The Dan Murphy Collection *
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DETROIT FREE PRESS: “’Gold Is Beautiful”
(Above WWWW ad courtesy freep.com newspapers archive. Copyright 2017; Newspapers.com)
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Ed Busch WWWW aircheck date: Sunday, December 31, 1972
From the MCRFB NEWS archive: 1970
WWWW To Add Oldies With Current Hits
Detroit — Though WWWW-FM is building an image here of being the solid gold station, general manager Don Barrett said that the heavy slate of programming will be current releases from the charts. Working slowing with national program manager Ken Dowe, who’s responsible for the programming of all the McLendon Broadcasting stations, Barrett set up a format which hinges on two oldies to one current record.
All the oldies are slated for the personalities, though the deejays use their judgments in playing current hits. The current records are usually in the upper half of Billboard Hot 100 Chart or in the top 15 sellers in the city, although WWWW-FM will also play new releases such as Dionne Warwick’s “Your Own Backyard.”
The oldies will go back to 1951, and the station has a library that will permit it to go nine-days without repeating an oldie. This is why Barrett slates all of the oldies — so that when an oldie comes up, it comes up at a different time of the day. “Gee” by the Crow is just as good at 3 a.m. as it is at 3 pm., Barrett said. And, to create a consistent sound around the clock, the station doesn’t alter its sound during the “housewives” hours or the afternoon hours when teens and young adults are more prone to listen to radio.
The reason for the format change (WWWW-FM was a background music station until March 10) was that a study of ARB and Pulse figures showed the station was “fighting with too many stations for too small a piece of the audience pie,” Barrett said. Barrett, whose career includes serving as national program director of all McLendon stations, was most recently in sales in XTRA, a Tijuana station in which McLendon is involved in.
Deejays at the station include program director Ron Rose, Chuck Richards, Tom Michaels, Robin Seymour on weekends, and Tom Clay. Clay, who does the 5 – midnight stint on the station, comes in at 9 a.m. to start prepping his show, Barrett said — “the sign of a real pro.” In McLendon fashion, WWWW-FM is building a campaign around Clay that will include a two-week saturation spot schedule on local television.
The station recently gave away a gold-painted 1957 Chevrolet to help build its image and is now preparing to give away “Good Guys” sweatshirts because no other radio station has done it in Detroit for several years.
Oldies are separated in three different lists — A, going back before 1960; B, 1960 through 1964; C, 1965 through the present. Any time a pre-1960 record is played, the next record is from the “C” list, said Barrett, so that the sound don’t stay too long in the distant past. END
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(Information and news source: Billboard; July 25, 1970)
A MCRFB Note: You can watch a video with Don Schuster on WWWW-FM, December 25, 1970, in a previous MCRFB (February 20, 2012) feature by going HERE.
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Former WWWW-FM/WYCD Detroit Country morning legend Joe Wade Formicola passed away, Tuesday May 30, 2017. He died due to an undisclosed illness.
Joe Wade was the morning man at Detroit’s WWWW from 1987 to 1995. He was named CMA Personality of the Year in 1988. Joe Wade Formicola was recently inducted in the Country Radio Hall of Fame, Nashville, Tennessee, in February 2017.
Along with WYCD alumi Linda Lee (Linda passed away, March 2017), he will be posthumously inducted in the country hall’s ‘Class of 2017,’ on Wednesday, June 21.
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Photos: Joe Wade Formicola (main) in 1993. Joe Wade (WWWW; bottom left) in 1986. Joe Wade (WWWW; bottom right) in 1988.
Joe Wade Formicola WWWW aircheck date: Thursday, April 2, 1992
