The Day the Music Died: The Long, Strange Journey of Beloved Columbus Radio Station WWCD

If you’re of a certain age, and a certain taste in music, you remember CD101. WWCD went live in the summer of 1990 at 101.1 FM. There was no streaming, no SiriusXM; back then, you probably didn’t even have a CD player in your car. If you wanted to listen to music while driving or working, radio was the most common choice. In 1990, the popular music radio landscape was on the verge of an upheaval, but that hadn’t happened yet. This was before the Lollapalooza traveling music festival and Nirvana’s Nevermind album brought alternative rock music to the masses. In 1990, “alternative rock” wasn’t a commonly used term. It was college, indie, punk or postpunk, and it sure as hell wasn’t on commercial radio. 

There have always been those edgier, offbeat songs that most people don’t like, but are absolutely thrilling to an enthusiastic subset of music fans. In the 1960s, The Mothers of Invention and The Velvet Underground built small, passionate fan bases without selling many records. Over the years, a handful of oddballs, such as David Bowie, Blondie and Prince, found their way to superstardom; but most were consigned to eclectic record collections and college radio.  

In the 1980s, college radio stations were the best place to go for something new and different. If you lived close enough to Granville, you could pick up Denison’s WDUB—known as “the Doobie”—which used to broadcast at 91.1 FM. But Columbus’ big college station, WOSU-FM, played classical music, as it does today. Another public station, WCBE, owned by Columbus City Schools, began programming an eclectic midday music mix in 1990, though it was sandwiched between the morning and afternoon news broadcasts. Columbus commercial FM music radio was similar to other U.S. metro areas: Top 40, soul and R&B, album-oriented rock, country, oldies.  

Then, out of nowhere, on Aug. 21,1990, CD101 was born. Maggie Smith, the local poet and author, remembers her delight in discovering the station as a 13-year-old growing up in Westerville. “What was big in Columbus at the time was 97.9, QFM96, Sunny 95—it was all pop-rock-slash-hair-metal,” recalls Smith, whose writing is often inspired by music. “And yet you could tune in to this radio station where they were playing The Cure and T. Rex and Adrian Belew and Marshall Crenshaw and Siouxsie and the Banshees, and all this other stuff that you couldn’t hear unless you owned the records.”  She remembers calling in requested songs, sometimes waiting hours to hear them. “I would sit by the boombox and wait for my song to be played so I could hit the record button. And then the beginning of the song was always missing.”  

To its new fans, CD101 seemed a little too good to be true. There was a reason that the successful pop music stations were playing MC Hammer, Guns N’ Roses and New Kids on the Block. They were popular, and listeners would sit through radio commercials to hear them. The idea that a radio station could play The Replacements every day and attract enough listeners to sell advertising spots seemed aspirational at best. It was fun, but it couldn’t last.  

And, ultimately, it didn’t. On Feb. 1 of this year, WWCD, possibly Ohio’s last independent radio station, went off the air. Listeners could be forgiven for believing it would somehow come back from the dead, since it had done so before, twice fleeing to new destinations on the dial—first to 102.5 and then to 92.9. But this winter, there was no surprise happy ending. Delmar Media Group, which owns a handful of Ohio radio stations, now broadcasts on 92.9. The station started out playing a similar format—alternative music, including local bands—so that a casual listener might have mistaken it for its predecessor. But there was no Mornings with Brian Phillips, no Cover of the Day at 5:30 p.m., no No Repeat Thursday. After several weeks, the station switched to an oldies format.

Delmar vice president and general manager Mark Litton says he’d hoped to work out a deal to continue as CD92.9. He knows the alternative music genre may not be for everybody, but believed it was worth trying to harness the goodwill the station had built in the community. “You’d have to be an idiot not to try to carry on that torch when you’re looking at what our competition is,” Litton says. “Everybody says radio is dying as a medium, and here’s a poster child that shows that it’s not.”

WWCD had three more years on its lease at 92.9 FM, but Delmar had notified the station the rent would be going up. So, rather than continue to lease, WWCD president Randy Malloy wanted to buy it. Delmar and Malloy agreed in principle to a $1.4 million price and a 10-year payment plan but couldn’t reach agreement on the terms. Emails between Malloy and Delmar show the biggest sticking point was over steep fees for late payments that would result in default after 10 days. Malloy told Delmar the penalties were unreasonable; Delmar believed they were necessary because of Malloy’s history of tardiness. 

When the sale fell through, Delmar expressed interest in continuing CD92.9 under the same call letters and perhaps even the same staff. Malloy, who has owned the station’s intellectual property since 2010, informed Delmar it could not simply assume WWCD’s identity; it would need to buy it. When Delmar put out a press release announcing its intent to continue operations as WWCD, Malloy immediately countered that it did not have the legal right to do so. Delmar backed down and rebranded the station as 93X.  

The failure in negotiations—which even prompted a Jan. 31 letter from U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown urging both sides to “exhaust all options toward a compromise that would keep the station on the air and the workers in their jobs”—created hard feelings between Delmar and the WWCD fanbase. Both Malloy and Litton say they feel like they’ve been publicly misrepresented, even though their respective accounts aren’t all that different from each other. Ultimately, what killed WWCD is what made its existence so unlikely back in 1990: Independent radio is more of a labor of love than a business strategy.  

“It’s sad,” Maggie Smith says. “The voice of Brian Phillips in the morning is such a Columbus thing. It feels really strange to not have it around.” But stranger still is that the station lasted as long as it did. Musical tastes can be fleeting; radio stations often flame out or change formats trying to keep up with them. And yet WWCD endured for more than 33 years. The first Columbus radio station to play Nirvana lived six years longer than Kurt Cobain.  

“Everyone who was there was there because they truly just loved it and believed in it,” says Shawn Ireland, who co-hosted the CD101 morning show from 1996 to 1998. Ireland has worked at a number of Columbus media outlets over the years, including WNCI, Sunny 95, WCOL, 93.3 the Bus and Fox 28’s Good Day Columbus. She says WWCD was different from all of them. “It was love. These people just loved this music so passionately, and that’s why they worked predominantly for peanuts.” 

➽ Randy Malloy looked exhausted but cheerful Jan. 28 as he served drinks at the CD92.9 Big Room Bar. A live music venue and watering hole upstairs from the radio studio, the Big Room was hosting a celebration to mark the station’s last weekend. Malloy—who started at the station as an intern in the early 1990s—struck a defiant tone, suggesting there could be a way to get WWCD back on the air. He pointed out that he’d rescued the station before and was pulling out all the stops to do so again. Malloy still had hope, though he  didn’t seem to have a plan.  

Nearby, Jenelle Blankenship was soaking up the scene in between bands. A lifelong Central Ohio resident, Blankenship first heard CD101 when she was a sophomore in high school in 1999 while it was playing “Tiny Cities Made of Ashes” by Modest Mouse. “I’d never heard anything like it,” she said. Ever since, she had been a devotee to the station and its staff. “I’ve never turned back,” she said. “They’re incredible human beings, and wherever they go and whatever they do, I’m going to find them and support them.” 

WWCD had roughly two kinds of listeners. There were the folks who may have had the station first or second on their car radio dial—Gen Xers who grew up with R.E.M. and New Order; millennials who grew up with Radiohead and The White Stripes. Then there were those like Blankenship, who didn’t just love the music but also the people who played it. They spoke in their own coded language: Lounge Points, Andyman-A-Thon, the 5 Spot, Frontstage, Independent Playground. These phrases were meaningless to most people, but very much part of the WWCD vocabulary. “It’s become a lifestyle,” says longtime morning host Brian Phillips.  

Considering how much WWCD embraced and was embraced by the Columbus community, it is surprising that the station originated as a Jersey import. It was launched by New Jersey-based Video Services, which soon sold the frequency to a local businessman named Roger Vaughan. Sometime around 1992, Vaughan decided to broaden the format in order to attract new listeners. So you might have heard The Doors in between Garbage and Joy Division. The reaction from many of CD101’s core listeners was swift and furious. For a time in the early-to-mid ’90s, you could show off your personal punk rock purity by slapping a CD101 SUCKS bumper sticker on your car.  

As the Nirvana-fueled radio revolution pushed alternative rock into the mainstream, corporate radio stations began testing out the market. The competition seemed to inspire a degree of soul-searching, pushing CD101 to figure out what it wanted to be. By the turn of the century, WWCD had settled on an alternative music format that was just mainstream enough to maintain a sustainable radio audience. Along with rock bands like the Blur and Strokes, it showcased hip-hop, like OutKast, and even a bit of alt-country, like local artist Angela Perley & the Howlin’ Moons.  

The station’s team members created partnerships with arts organizations and prioritized local music. They built relationships in the community. WWCD could not afford a subscription to Nielsen Audio Ratings, so it’s anybody’s guess how they ranked in local listenership. But even if they weren’t the most popular station, they may have been the most beloved, repeatedly honored in reader surveys by Columbus Monthly and other local outlets. They were alternative—and yet very much part of the Columbus establishment. 

Back onstage at the Big Room Bar on Jan. 28, Angela Perley began her set. “It’s such an honor to be here,” she said between songs. She smiled. “I don’t usually do drugs or drink before shows, but today I’m breaking that rule. It’s that kind of day.” Perley had more reason than most to mourn the loss of WWCD. She is among a handful of Columbus-based artists who were elevated to a degree of local stardom thanks in part to regular airplay on the station. Tracks from Homemade Vision, the 2016 album by Angela Perley & the Howlin’ Moons, received so much airplay that they regularly landed at No. 1 on the station’s daily roundup of the most requested songs. Over the past three decades, other local bands found their songs in heavy rotation—not out of charity to the local music scene, but because listeners wanted to hear them.  

“Tons of bands benefited, but nobody benefited more than Watershed,” says Colin Gawel, singer and guitarist for Watershed, a Cheap Trick-inspired band that has been playing shows and releasing music since the 1990s. Gawel says it was Andy Davis—CD101’s longtime program director, known on the air as Andyman—who first played Watershed’s song “Star Vehicle” in 1998. “I ran into him, and I said, ‘Thanks for playing our song. That’s really nice,’ ” Gawel recalls. “Andy said, ‘Colin, I’m not doing it to be nice. I have a theory we can do local music between other bands, and it just needs to sound like it belongs between Green Day and the Foo Fighters. And if I can do that, I can play other local bands and put them in the rotation. But if it doesn’t work, I’m probably going to get fired.’ ” 

Davis didn’t get fired. Instead, he became the public face of CD101—until he died in a tragic drowning in 2010, the same year Roger Vaughan sold the 101.1 frequency to WOSU. At the time, the deal was announced as a win-win: WOSU now had a station to broadcast classical music all day, and WWCD could now be heard on a stronger radio signal, 102.5. But it was an ominous sign of the station’s finances. As CD102.5, WWCD no longer owned its frequency; it was now renting from the Southeastern Ohio Broadcasting System. And renters can be evicted.  

Recognizing this, Malloy—who had purchased WWCD’s intellectual property when Vaughan sold the frequency—launched  a crowdfunding campaign, supported by the Columbus arts community, to raise between $1 million and $5 million toward the purchase of the 102.5 signal. Malloy has never announced how much was raised, but five years later, WWCD was booted off the air, going silent for a few days before finding its final home at 92.9. 

➽ The morning of Jan. 31 was an emotional rollercoaster for Brian Phillips. Broadcasting one last time from the studio on South Front Street, Phillips cried on the air while talking about his kids, now adults, who had grown up around the station. He waxed nostalgic, recalling morning show stunts from decades past, and he cheered up when Michael Palermo, who had been Phillips’ morning show co-host in the 1990s, made a guest appearance in the studio. “I don’t mean to sound like I’m whining or anything, but it’s been really emotionally draining,” Phillips said between songs.  “It’s been like going to an Irish wake every day for three weeks.” 

Phillips joined the station in 1994 and served as its morning host for most of WWCD’s tenure, sometimes with a cohost or two, but in later years, by himself. Over the years, he came up with entertaining segments—Trending Topics, Rock Band or Not, Dead or Canadian, What Would Morrissey Do?—but mostly, he played songs. Shawn Ireland, who had been part of WNCI’s Morning Zoo, noticed the difference in CD101’s morning show format when she was hired to join Phillips and Palermo in the mid-90s. “The Morning Zoo has always been around the personalities, with the music secondary,” she says. “It’s the other way around at CD101.” 

Even on his last day, Phillips seemed to be playing music as much for himself as for his Central Ohio audience. He turned up the sound in the studio on Echo & the Bunnymen’s “The Puppet,” closing his eyes, nodding his head to the beat and mouthing the lyrics, like any other middle-aged rock ’n’ roll fan. “It sucks,” he said, before putting on the song. “People ask me what I’m going to do next, and I haven’t even thought about it.” 

WWCD continues to exist, streaming music through its website, CD929fm.com, for those fans—and if anyone has them, it’s WWCD—devoted enough to listen to an online station.  Malloy hopes to continue paying the remaining staff, which includes Phillips and the other on-air hosts, with revenue from streaming ads and listener club memberships. The website continues to list upcoming concerts and sells an assortment of T-shirts with the CD101, CD102.5 and CD92.9 logos, depending on which era of the station is your personal favorite. The brand endures. It just isn’t a radio station anymore.  

“It’s always a big deal to hear yourself on the radio,” Watershed’s Gawel says. “I’m going to miss this, driving around and hearing myself. This isn’t going to happen anymore. This is gone.” 

A Timeline of WWCD Radio

1990 

CD101 goes live. 

1991 

Roger Vaughan purchases 101.1 FM from New Jersey-based Video Services. 

1992 

Format adjustment sparks a fan backlash. 

2010 

Program director Andy Davis, 42, dies from a heart attack while swimming. 

Roger Vaughan sells 101.1 FM to WOSU. 

Station goes live on CD102.5. 

Randy Malloy purchases intellectual property from Vaughan. 

2015 

Crowdfunding campaign to purchase license is unsuccessful. 

2020 

Program director Mason Brazelle, 53, dies after suffering an ulcer. 

CD102.5 briefly goes off the air and then goes live on CD92.5. 

2024 

CD92.9 goes off the air but continues to broadcast on the internet. 

A CD101 1990 Playlist 

• “Happy,” Ned’s Atomic Dustbin 
• “Kool Thing,” Sonic Youth 
• “Stop!” Jane’s Addiction 
• “Ball and Chain,” Social Distortion 
• “You’re Not Very Well,” The Charlatans 
• “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” Sinead O’Connor 
• “Velouria,” Pixies 
• “There She Goes,” The La’s 
• “Candy,” Iggy Pop and Kate Pierson 
• “Personal Jesus,” Depeche Mode 

Five Columbus Songs You Might Recognize from WWCD 

• “Long Live Doug (Standing),” Howlin’ Maggie (1996) 
• “Can’t Be Myself,” Watershed (2002) 
• “Used Kids,” Earwig (2006) 
• “Electric Flame,” Angela Perley & the Howlin’ Moons (2016) 
• “Momentary Coastal Fatigue,” The Secret Life of Houseplants (2022) 

This story is from the April 2024 issue of Columbus Monthly. It has been updated to include radio station WXGT's format change in early March.