Set The Wayback Machine For 1992
Today at 5pm, North American Broadcasting’s WRKZ (99.7 The Blitz)/Columbus, OH will turn back the clock 25 years and replay the station’s original sign-on, just the way it sounded on Friday, July 3, 1992. The launch replay will kick off “Blitz 1992,” a weekend-long 25th anniversary celebration that runs through Sunday night and features the songs and sounds of the station’s inaugural weekend a quarter-century ago.
Hal Fish was a member of the original Blitz launch team. Now VP of Programming and Operations for North American Broadcasting, Fish fondly recalls, “When I pressed the button that played the very first song on The Blitz (‘You Can Still Rock in America’ by Night Ranger), I never imagined that the station, or I, for that matter, would still be here 25 years later! We called ourselves ‘Solid Rock’ back then and launched with a combination of hard rock, hair bands and the songs from emerging Seattle grunge scene.”
Fish continued, “For ‘Blitz 1992,’ we’ve tried to be completely accurate, in terms of the actual songs that would have been playing on The Blitz that first weekend, although no playlists or long-form recordings of the station from that time still exist. A lot of the songs will be familiar to current Blitz listeners — Ozzy, AC/DC, Pearl Jam, Van Halen, Nirvana… Other bands that may have faded from radio station playlists, like Queensryche, Tesla and Cinderella will reemerge for ‘Blitz 1992!'”
Pictured in this vintage Blitz staff photo, circa 1994, (l-r): Suzy Waud, Tommy Hough, Mark “The Shark,“ Hal Fish, “Blazor,” Steve “The Gatekeeper” Hammond and Ronni Hunter.
