WNXX minus KNXX

They have been a fixture simulcast since 2003. In September 2003, WZRB 104.5 FM dropped Urban AC and became WNXX simulcasting KNXX 104.9 FM The X. They were an Alternative Rock powerhouse for Baton Rouge blanketing downtown and both the northern and southern suburbs. On January 4th 2010 at 1:00 PM that stopped. Someone is doubtlessly updating their Wikipedia entry right now.

KNXX plods on with Alt rock as the X as they have been for most of a decade. The story starts back in 2000. New Radco LLC sold 104.5 WBJJ to Guaranty Broadcasting Corporation. WBJJ used to be an eclectic Rhythmic Oldies station which sported odd dashes of zydeco, and blues with the calls WUXN. But WBJJ was pretty much standard Urban AC fare. Guaranty nixed Urban AC and went alternative rock. Many rags identified them as a "rock" station and this is absolutely not the case, not by playlist not by branding.

In 2003 the WNXX/KNXX simulcast began and it ran until just 2 days ago. The simulcast ended abruptly in the middle of a sing without any preamble or apology. After a 6 second interval of silence WNXX became an ESPN sports talker. The audio is below.

The First Simulcast

On January 4th 1923 the first simulcast occurred. A concert live on 660 WEAF-AM in New York City was carried on 1230 WNAC-AM in Boston. the connection between the two stations was not by STL, it was by telephone line, leased from Bell telephone.

The word "simulcast" did not yet exist. They called it a "chain broadcast." If you're wondering how WEAF explained this all to the phone company dont. AT&T owned WEAF making the experiment much more feasible. At 8:03 PM Davera Nadwernay sang the song "Habanera" from the opera Carmen by Bizet. That broadcast only lasted 5 minutes, emanating directly from Carnagie Hall. (While this is the ersion I beleive, other sources refer to this as a solo saxophone performance)

For KDKA thsi was less than a year after they received the first commercial license from the FRC. This was also of course the very beginning of network broadcasting. Only a few months later they attempted a bigger simulcast involving 810 WGY-AM in Schnectady, KDKA-AM in Pittsburgh, and 1500 KYW-AM in Chicago. This too was successful. AT&T enthused by the success of the two projects built a station in D.C. 980 WCAP-AM to advance their ability to syndicate programming. The facilitiy they built at WCAP for the purpose of linking staitons by phone was called the "Red" layout. This became the NBC Red Network, which formally launched Sept. 9th, 1926.