WODE-FM

WODE-FM (99.9 FM, "99.9 The Hawk"), is a radio station licensed to Easton, Pennsylvania, in the Lehigh Valley area of Pennsylvania, in the United States.

The station is owned by Connoisseur Media, through licensee Connoisseur Media Licenses, LLC, and offers a classic rock format, playing rock hits from the 1960s into the early 1990s, and is consistently at the top of the ratings in the Allentown-Easton-Bethlehem market.

History

WEEX began operations on 98.7 FM as a stand-alone FM in 1948. Its call-letters stood for Easton Express, Easton's newspaper as well as the station's then-owner.

WEEX then moved to 99.9 FM as WEEX-FM in the 1950s while putting an AM station on the air at 1230 AM under the WEEX call sign. WEEX eventually switched to Top 40 during that time and used their FM to simulcast much of their programming to areas where the AM could not be heard.

In the early 1970s, WEEX-FM's simulcast with the AM was broken off under Federal Communications Commission (FCC) changes which forbid full-time AM/FM simulcasts. The station switched to beautiful music under the WQQQ call-letters. The calls were chosen because the lower-case Q closely resembled the number 9, hence the station's frequency 99.9. The station offered an instrumental-based easy listening format, playing instrumental cover versions of pop songs. A few times per hour a soft vocalist was mixed in.