Twilight Of The Fox

“Black become the sun’s beams in the summers that follow… a wind age, a wolf age, before the world goes headlong. No man will have mercy on another.”

Flip through some of the vinyl record albums played by Barrington-raised disc jockey Pat Capone at 103.9 The Fox on the MCC campus, weekdays between 5:30 and whenever-he-feels-like-it, and you might think that you’re looking at illustrated portrayals of the above quote – especially if it’s Metal Monday. The words don’t come from “Holy Diver” or “Peace Sells… But Who’s Buying?” – they’re a thousand-year-old description of Ragnarok, the Norse “Twilight of the Gods.”

Nowadays, the time of America’s own “rock gods” seems just about as distant as that of the Vikings. But for the last month, radio fans in Woodstock and across Chicagoland have felt something like the doom of the Norse creeping upon them – to the delight of almost no one, and for no easily-understood reason, the number one rock station in the Northwest Suburbs is being taken off the air.

Alex “Quigs” Quigley, 103.9’s midday DJ, said there is “nothing conceivable that can be done” to save the station – funding wasn’t even close to a problem, nor was FCC compliance (though listeners to Capone’s nightly rants might find that one hard to believe). To use a turn of phrase, The Fox’s death was a contract killing: “Long before I got here, this station and Star 105.5 were sold by NextMedia to Matrix Broadcasting,” Quigley described. “The terms of the sale were that another company, Digity, had the right to purchase these stations as long as they kicked out a couple other stations they owned in Chicago… there’s an FCC cap, you can only have six FMs.”

In 2016, Digity sold all their stations – and their right to buy Matrix Broadcasting – to another radio company, Alpha Media. “From day-to-day operations, it didn’t really affect us,” Quigley said. “We were never technically owned by any of the major conglomerates, so we were kind of able to do whatever we wanted” … for instance, The Fox could let a DJ play an entire hour of off-list and fan-submitted vinyl every weekday during radio primetime – for years, and to massively popular reception.

But late in 2018, the hammer dropped: “What Alpha really wanted was to get Star under their umbrella,” Quigley said. “They found buyers for a couple of their other stations, and one of them was us.” As far as Quigs knows, the other station in the sale, 100.7 Q-Rock in Joliet, will be lucky enough to stay in-format. But the buyers for 103.9?

“They’re the Borg,” Capone said. The long-haired, not-as-old-as-he-sounds-yet rocker is also a Star Trek fan, and he’s not the first to draw the connection between the Educational Media Foundation – owners of nationally-syndicated Christian Contemporary station K-LOVE – and the mentally unified, emotionally contented producers of 2367’s galactic smash hit, “Resistance Is Futile, You Will Be Assimilated.”

“They’re non-profit, they have unlimited funding behind them through donations – hundreds of millions of dollars at their access at all times,” Capone said, “and they don’t care about ratings, they don’t care about your building, your equipment, your billing, your sales force, they don’t care about the color of your van! They don’t care what you say about them, you could say nothing but ‘I hate K-LOVE!’ until the day they flip the switch! K-LOVE is the Borg, if they get their hands on it, it’s gone!”

Eddie Volkman, two-decade host of the Eddie & Jobo Morning Show on Chicago’s B96 – before he found his calling to “Wake The Fox Up!” in McHenry County – said his reaction to Capone’s analysis was, “Oh my God, that’s exactly right!”

Volkman elaborated, “they move in, emotionless, assimilate the station, make it their way, and then move on to the next one. People have said to me, ‘Eddie, you’re a good man with family values and a daughter, if they’re a Christian organization then wouldn’t they consider that?’ And I go, ‘no, they’re the Borg, they don’t care!’” – he imitated a sci-fi zapping sound, and shared his mental image of “the big square, heading this way!”

The silver lining to this episode, according to Volkman, Quigs, and Capone, was that after just six years on the air, nobody less than “The Borg” could’ve taken 103.9 out – the fans, from Woodstock and points beyond, would have beaten any living opponent first. “We’re number one in men almost every single week in Kane and McHenry Counties,” Quigley said. “Where our signal is available, we beat The Drive, we beat WLS-FM, we were beating The Loop” – Chicago’s legendary rock station of 1977 to 2018, former home of Capone, and predecessor-in-assimilation to 103.9 – “we won,” Quigley said, “as much as we could have. I’ve never had a radio station in my career whose listeners have been this passionate.”

Capone had similar admiration for the small-but-deep “pond” of listeners 103.9 covered (and technically still does, from between the next minute of this writing to the next few months following publication – after which, “The Rapture” will, for once, be inevitable). He particularly thanked “John” of Woodstock, who left two bottles of Iron Maiden’s “Trooper” beer as a gift moments before The Independent’s interview – thanks to Crystal Lake Brewing, 103.9’s own “Fox Rocker” red ale will long outlive the actual station, to the total bewilderment of Quigs.

“Small markets work!”, Capone said. “I’ve got emails, I’ve got letters on the wall – who writes anymore! I’ve left stations before, but I’ve never had so many people come up and thank me… women, kids, old dudes, I had one guy who was eighty-four years old come up to me with his wife, saying ‘I listen to you! What are we going to do!’ The impact this station has had… it shows how much people who grew up here, who listened to stations like The Loop in their heyday, they really wanted this music.”

And Volkman, who decades ago had started his career at a small station in Oklahoma called “The Fox,” knew exactly what Capone meant. “It’s a chance to really connect with people,” he said. “You get out and you actually meet your listeners… you can talk about the boats on the Fox River, you can go out and fill sandbags when it floods… it’s live and local radio, the way it was meant to be. I’ve enjoyed the experience… we’ve got this time to say goodbye and to bond with people, and it’s almost like an Irish wake. They know something’s going away, but it’s time to celebrate what we’ve done and what we’ve had… I’m looking forward to the time we have left.”

But with angst and appreciation both pouring in from fans across Chicagoland, and with their small-and-loose local format more than vindicated, the 103.9 team has given more than a passing thought to reincarnation (so to speak). Quigs is optimistic, and Volkman sees even the time they’ve had since mid-February as the perfect chance to “get mentally prepared, fiscally prepared, and to go out with a bang” – Capone, while just as passionate, had less faith in FCC rules that nearly ban new antenna construction, and which favor “Distilled-Until-Tasteless” national syndication to the point of allowing something like the EMF “Borg Cube” to exist.

But on the Positive side, Woodstock and McHenry County residents will now have even more chances to hear K-LOVE – on 89.1, on 91.1, on 91.7, on 92.5, on 97.9, on 99.1, and very soon, on 103.9. At the rate we’re going, we might at last reach the point –

“When all are one and one is all… to be a rock, and not to roll.”