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
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