During the late 80’s WAPW was the leading Mainstream CHR in Atlanta with ratings in the 7 to 9 share range and beating out longtime runners WZGC (Z-93) and WQXI (94-Q) out of the format. But during the fall 1991, the station started stumbling from a 6.5 in the summer book to a 4.7. This was caused by a decision at the time by management to lean heavy on Dance in order to find a nitch for the station. Reversing course, the station started re-adding Rock & Alternative tracks over the winter of 1991-92 and rose to a 6.3 in the winter, then dropped in the 4’s in the spring & summer books. After experimenting with a nightly all-Alternative music program called “On The Edgeâ€, the decision was made to change format to Alternative and the weekend before the format change on October 26th, the station played promos saying that “On Monday, October 26th at 12 noon, Atlanta will lose its Powerâ€. The following Monday, then-Morning Show host Domino, co-host Leslie Fram, and then-PD Rick Stacy took calls all morning explaining what was about to take place and why. Shortly after the format change Domino left for then-new CHR startup KHKS in Dallas and Rick Stacy left for KKFR (Power 92) in Phoenix.
Patrick
Remember the months prior to the change and the identity shake up… And made certain to be sitting still listening about an hour before the change. Performed security patrol and response for the building where the station was located later in 93-97. Quite a group of fun and unique personalities up there then. Some are still around. Proud to have been able to protect “THE-X”
~Patrick Guinn
VP Excalibur Protective Service
Atlanta
AtlantaRadioGuy
Working at crosstown WSTR at the time, we were all overjoyed to see WAPW blink and flip, because there were plans drawn up that when 99.7 left the CHR format (and we knew they were), Star would grow some balls and step up its game. We had a brilliant PD (Lee Chesnut) and he was sitting on ready for the change to be made. Lee had already scrapped the stupid nightly jazz show. As soon as Power was done, we got Marc Driscoll to do the liners (he did them at Power for years) so people would feel comfortable at Star when they went station-surfing right after the WAPW flip. We also started using “Today’s Best Music” as a positioner. Lee dayparted the harder stuff and rap to nights and kept it very work-friendly during the day and that was when WSTR really took off. We had Steve & Vikki (two of the kindest people I ever met) in AM drive, Kevin Steele, Craig Hunt, and Karen Turner on during the rest of the day. Good times!