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History of WXOF-FM
Thanks
to Marc Tyll for
this history of WXOF.
Conceived by Amarillo, Texas broadcasters Bill and Lucille Lacy,
planning began for a new radio station for Yankeetown after the couple made a
visit to the Nature Coast area just a few years earlier. Because of
Yankeetown’s short distance North of Crystal River, the Lacys felt this
area would be perfect for a new station that would fill a void in the
underserved Citrus County coastal communities of Crystal River and Homosassa
Springs as well as Dunnellon, located in western Marion County. Dunnellon had
lost it’s only FM station to Ocala in 1989 when WTRS-FM
102.3 completed a technical upgrade from a 3kw FM to a 50,000 watt
station and moved its studios to Ocala. The original call letters for 96.3 were WAZN,
later becoming WBKX. The station never went on the air using either of
these call letters. The Lacy’s had already received a construction permit for WABU-FM
104.3 Inglis and had constructed the station as WAVQ
- The Wave. The original plans were to co-locate the Inglis and
Yankeetown stations under one roof with studios in Crystal River, creating the
area’s first radio duopoly. A few months after the construction permit was
issued for WAZN, the call letters were changed to WBKX. The
construction permit for WBKX was then sold to ‘The Gull Group’ headed
by Carl
J. Marcocci who already owned country formatted WXOF-FM 106.3
Beverly Hills along with WINV-AM
1560, Inverness and recently acquired WAVQ-FM
104.3 Inglis. Under The Gull Group, the WXOF call letters moved
to WBKX-FM
96.3. The new WXOF was
constructed at the WAVQ tower site and on October 1, 1998, WXOF-FM
96.3 - ‘The Country Fox’ - began regular
programming. The former WXOF became WGUL-FM programming The Music
of Your Life. Once WXOF was on the air, Marcocci sold WAVQ to C.
W. “Bill” Caldwell who immediately donated the class A radio station to
the Seven Rivers Presbyterian Church in Lecanto, creating Seven Rivers
Broadcast Ministry, Inc. The Country Fox, as it was known, filled a 9-year void
in the area left behind when country formatted WTRS-FM moved to Ocala in
1989. The reasoning and logic was that since the West Central Florida area was
without a local country station between 1989 and 1998, the area was ready to
embrace the Fox with its blend of modern and classic country favorites. The
strategy worked for a while, but ratings and listener-ship began to decline as
listeners and advertisers were lured away by the contemporary and rock formatted
stations. It was decided a format change and new station image was needed, so
plans were made and implemented. In 2004 the format was changed to Classic Rock,
known as ‘Classic Hits 96.3 The Fox’. Today the classic rock programming is
re-broadcast over the 5,000 watt signal of co-owned and co-located WINV-AM
1560 Beverly Hills along with WXOF-FM. The WXOF studios and offices
are among four Citrus county radio stations located under one umbrella owned by The
Gull Group with its operating hub in Homosassa Springs in the Homosassa
Shopping Center, located on South U.S. Highway 19. The Gull Group’s Citrus
stations include co-owned WXCV-FM
95.3 Homosassa Springs; WINV-AM 1560
Beverly Hills; and Scott Shannon’s True Oldies 106.3 WJQB-FM Spring
Hill.
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WXOF-FM
96.3
