After 11 years as an alternative-rock station, WDOD-FM 96.5 has switched its format to Top 40, according to Danny Howard, director of programming and operations.
“The Mountain was a very unique concept of radio and had a lot of success over the years, but we felt musical directions and cycles were changing, and we felt it was time to change and roll with it,” he said.
Regular listeners to the 100,000-watt station may have noticed over the last year that the occasional Top 40 song was being slipped into the rotation. Howard said that was by design.
“We went live with it Monday at 10 a.m.,” he said.
Under the new format, the morning show will feature Kidd Kraddick’s syndicated show. The rest of the day will feature local on-air personalities Victoria Gaylen, Jason Walker, Brad Steiner and Sean Stewart, in that order. Stewart will serve as music director, Howard said.
He added that the decision was not made without much research and discussion.
“Our listeners have been very loyal, and we appreciate and respect them,” he said. “Our numbers have stayed about the same for a period of time, and it had plateaued. And while we were winning in most of our demographic battles, it’s a crowded field, and we decided this was the way to go.”
WDOD is owned by Bahakel Communications in Charlotte, N.C. It will remain WDOD and be called 96.5 The Mountain, Howard said.
* In honor of baseball season getting under way, I thought I’d share some of the funny comments I’ve heard over the years at area ballfields.
One of my favorites comes from Chattanooga State baseball coach Greg Dennis. While coaching in Texas, he heard of a coaching veteran who went to the mound to pull his pitcher, who was doing a good job of finding the opposition’s bats.
The pitcher saw the coach coming and came off the mound to meet him before he got there.
“I’m fine coach,” he said. “I can go. I’m not tired.”
“I know you’re not, son, but your outfielders are,” the coach said.
I once watched a struggling young pitcher tear up as his coach went to “hook” him, the baseball term for replacing him. Someone in the stands asked what might have caused the player to cry, and the person next to him said, “The hook must have caught him in the eye.”
Reporting on his son’s effort the day before, a parent told me recently that his boy had really been hitting his spots while pitching.
“He set up his curveballs in the dirt with high fastballs off the backstop,” he said. “He wore that fence out.”
This same player once told his older brother, who had just watched two pitches get called for strikes against him, “try swinging the bat. See if that works better.”
Which reminds me of the time a fan in the stands said of the team’s centerfielder, “He’s not very fast, but he makes up for it by getting a really bad jump on the ball.”
This, of course, is borrowed from former USC and Tampa Bay coach John McKay, who once said of his Buccaneers, “We didn’t tackle well, but we made up for it by not blocking.”
I once heard a coach praise his third baseman after a hard hit ball got by him.
“You did a good job of getting out of the way of that one,” he said. “It never got close to you or your glove.”
Barry Courter is associate features editor, entertainment editor and books editor for the Times Free Press. He started his journalism career at the Chattanooga News-Free Press in 1987. He covers primarily entertainment and events for fyiWeekend and edits the Sunday books page. Born in Lafayette, Ind., Barry has lived in Chattanooga since 1968. He graduated from Notre Dame High School and the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga with a degree in broadcast journalism. He previously ...
