Published: June 14, 2007 10:55 pm         

Countdown nothing to worry about, police say

Staff reports



Oklahoma can relax. The world is not coming to an end, it’s just changing formats.

Enid Police Department has received several calls about a countdown currently being broadcast on Oklahoma City radio station WKY AM 930, which can be heard across the state.

“They’re inquiring as to what is going on,” Sgt. Eric Holtzclaw, Enid-Garfield County 911 Communications Center administrator, said of callers who have contacted the police department, a couple through the 911 lines.

What is going on, according to Dax Davis, spokesman for Citadel Broadcasting, which owns WKY, is a format change for the station, which had been broadcasting in Spanish until the countdown, which is now in English, began.

Davis said the countdown will continue until the new format is revealed at 9 a.m. Monday morning.

Currently, WKY is broadcasting the words T-minus, followed by the number of days, hours, minutes and seconds until the new format release. Davis said interspersed in the countdown are trivial comments, such as “How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop?”

However, Holtzclaw said, it is some of those comments along with the countdown that had some people in the Enid area concerned. He said the department checked into the station and there is no problem, it is just a format change and no violation has occurred.

Davis said Citadel has received numerous phone calls inquiring about the countdown, with curiosity from listeners ranging from a takeover to something wrong with their stereos.

“Certainly we wouldn’t have done it if we thought it would cause public concern,” he said.

Citadel is the second owner of WKY, which is the oldest radio station in the state, Davis said.