Stick Shutdown

This is a follow-up to last week's tirade on the government shutdown, but on a more local level, so those of you who read this from afar, kindly humor me for this week.
Here in western Pennsylvania, we've seen the demise of many local AM radio stations.  Not changing formats or moving out of the community and setting up shop elsewhere.  I mean turning their licenses back in to the FCC, knocking down their towers, and selling the land for development or leasing it to natural gas processors.
WASP, WCVI, WKZV, WESA, WPLW and WSTV have rode off into the sunset, never to return. Others are in danger of the same fate.  Yet there are others who enjoyed huge success years ago, but are now being sold off and rebranded to the point where all traces of their past prestige and power are being removed and forgotten about completely.
This time we say goodbye to the legendary WIXZ, or "Wickzee 1360", the moniker under which it became best known for, in between WMCK and WPTT.  It left the air earlier this month under the call sign WMNY, which it adopted for a former business news format.
For all intents and purposes, we'll refer to it as WIXZ in this forum.
Though licensed to McKeesport, a Pittsburgh suburb, WIXZ was very much a Pittsburgh station, and thanks to the ingenuity of its past owner, Alan Serena, it reinvented itself in the late 80s as a local station serving the Monongahela Valley and Pittsburgh's South Hills.  Utilizing a country music format via satellite (it had been local earlier), it boasted a stable of popular programs augmenting the music.  It was also one of the very few places where you could hear auto racing on the radio, which would take years to gain acceptance by radio listeners.  "Rappin' on Racin'", a local auto racing talk show, also became a listener favorite.
There was also no shortage of talented on-air professionals going through the doors.  Both up-and-comers looking to break into the business and those displaced by larger stations that retained their recognizability afterwards found their place on WIXZ.
Alan had called and offered me an interview in 1993 for WIXZ after the "donated sale" of a station I had managed the year before, but I had accepted an offer from another station just one day before.  As fate would have it, Alan and I would work together almost a decade later after another station where I worked had been acquired by Renda Broadcasting Corporation, the same company that Alan sold WIXZ to and would serve as its Vice-President of Operations.
Oddly enough, the same organization that acquired my former station in 1992 is now the new owner of WIXZ.  While WIXZ's channel won't fade to black, it does mark the end of an era.
I applaud both Alan Serena and Tony Renda for their vision and wisdom in keeping this station on the air as long as they have.  As this industry continues its natural progression that has necessitated the sale or silence of many stations, we can fondly reflect on Pittsburgh's own "Golden Age of Radio" and the place these two esteemed gentlemen have in its history.
To both, I say thank you.


NEXT WEEK:  Hazy Shade of Autumn