So there I was in my hotel room outside of Philadelphia last week, getting ready for the NAB Radio Show, when I went to check the day’s callsign changes – and lo and behold, there was a change about 50 miles south of Rochester, where WJSL 90.3 Houghton NY had become WXXY.
So what?
This one matters because it’s one of the legal IDs I get to read in my part-time job as a newscaster/program host at WJSL/WXXY’s parent station, WXXI in Rochester!
WJSL is the former Houghton College radio station that was donated to WXXI a decade ago – and ever since then, the old calls (“Jesus the Salt and the Light”) have stayed in place…until now.
So this week, we offer a selection of WJSL and WXXY IDs from the days surrounding the Sept. 23 call change. WJSL/WXXY is a “split simulcast” – it relays classical WXXI-FM most of the day, but switches to a relay of news-talk WXXI(AM) during morning and afternoon drive, and here you get to hear samples of both, including what turned out to be the last two times yours truly would ever give the WJSL ID, though I didn’t know it at the time.
If you’re scoring at home (or even if you’re alone ), this makes Scott the second Toppy editor to use the famed WXXY calls on-air. I, however, had jingles:
http://www.tophour.com/featsnd/bd_wxxy.mp3
On a technicality, I need to point out that Brian is in fact the only Toppy editor so far to use the WXXY calls on-air, since I haven’t pulled a shift since the call change in Houghton.
This will be rectified next week, and new IDs will be posted accordingly.
By the way, we had ’em first in upstate NY – before they were with Jeffro and company in suburban Chicago, and before their vacation at the Jersey shore, the WXXY calls were hanging out on 104.9 in Montour Falls NY, north of Elmira – now WNGZ, and represented thusly in Toppy.