The ongoing saga of locally-spawned music and broadcasting legacy WOXY continues and, once again, the station has been forced off the "air" (or Internet, as the case is) due to financial problems.—-
The long-running Alternative/Indie music station's story has been one of struggle and resilience, with financial backers coming in and out to save/kill the station. (Search "woxy" at citybeat.com for our many stories about the station's ups and downs over the years.) About six months ago the station (and its staffers and families) moved to Austin, Texas, from Cincinnati thanks to an offer of backing by the music company Future Sounds. Today, WOXY went dead at 10 a.m. and the main page at woxy.com featured this message: "Due to current economic realities and the lack of ongoing funding for WOXY's operations, we've been forced to suspend our live broadcasts as of March 23rd. We're continuing to explore options to keep The Future of Rock and Roll alive."
The fact that the station has bounced back from the dead in the past doesn't seem to be much solace for staffers. The station's Matt "Shiv" Shiverdecker wrote a note on Facebook about the closure just after the station went to dead air that said, in part, "We have been dubbed 'zombie radio' in the past after ownership shutdowns and resurrections, but it will take a pretty incredible company/plan coming around now to make me want to stick around at this point (although I guess we have to wait to see if anything shakes out in the days ahead). This time around, we no longer own WOXY and the entire situation is completely out of our hands."
Immediately after the announcement, local public radio station WVXU, which had been carrying WOXY on its local HD radio signal, announced WOXY would be replaced by an Alt music service from Philadelphia’s WXPN on VXU's second HD channel.
If you're rich and want to give saving the station a shot, contact info is at woxy.com.
