By the end of the week, Ohio's legendary WOXY will become an answer to the trivia question, "What was that radio sation in Rainman?" Two years after selling their terrestrial signal and trying to make a go of it as an internet only station, they're closing up shop and will fall silent this Friday, September 15th.

I can't say as I'm surprised. The cost of streaming music for commercial entities is enormous. Advertising revenues never covered the associated costs and a move to making their high-bitrate stream a subscription service couldn't make up the shortfall.

It was a gutsy experiment and one of these days when the music industry wakes up to the opportunities of new media they'll be remembered as being far ahead of their time. That will be little consolation, though, for what we're losing here and now.

Now Playing: "Hail, Mary" Shearwater Palo Santo

"Bam! The future of rock 'n roll." You're right, Linn, they really did have the future in mind when they when online exclusively. Too bad, it was a great station.

I didn't post here because of the thread title. teh old.

whateves.

quote:

Originally posted by booklikeabook:
See site for details, but basically, a web entrepeneur, Bill Nguyen, has made a deal to take on WOXY and continue it's mission AND make money. Sweet, sweet news.

To update and clarify, Bill Nguyen of lala.com opened a thread in the WOXY.com forums announcing his interest in helping to save the station. This morning, around 9:00 a.m. Eastern, Bill posted the following in the lala.com forums:

Good morning. Last night, we agreed to purchase WOXY one of the first alternative rock station. Next week, we'll make announcements to what all this mean but I encourage you to read the following posts to see what an amazing project we've undertaken.

It's probably still a bit early to be changing the topic title just yet. WOXY.com has had a significant infusion of capital before and has changed its business model midstream, and has by their own account cut their operating expenses to the bone in an effort to survive. In addition to new capital, it's going to take another new business model, but given that Nguyen and company are sitting on the official announcement until next week would seem to indicate that's going to be the case.

As a very, very active lala.com member, I've been highly pleased with the way they've run that venture. I'm cautiously optimistic for what this means going forward for both companies.

Now Playing: Good ole' terrestrial WTTS-FM