Pour a little gin and juice out for a homie.
On May 24th, WILD 104.9 – The Pepsi to KJ-103's Coke – quietly flipped formats to a genera-rock format called Alice, which promises to play some of the greatest, stalest, and most mainstream rock hits from the 1980s through today. I'm sure the 200 or so OKC rock and roll fans over 60 who haven't heard about the Internet will love it.
Although I had not listened to WILD 104.9 in ages, news like this is always kind of bittersweet in a nostalgic sense. There's something about the human condition that hates to see remnants of your past fade away into oblivion like my hairline...
I'm so old that I actually remember when WILD 104.9 debuted as WILD 97dot9 in the year 2000. It was a pretty big deal. OKC didn't have a rap and hip-hop-focused Top 40 FM station, and things like Napster, CDRs, and MP3s had yet to go mainstream, so it filled a big void in our market. Sure, the station didn't have the largest playlist – I think they were obligated to play I Forgot About Dre, Party Up, and Clark Matthews's all-time favorite, Juvenile's Back That Thang Up, every hour– but it was better than nothing.
I'm also so old that I remember listening to the station the first night that Joey Combs – The Ug of The Brooks Clinic billboard fame – debuted as the station's first DJ.