When station formats are truly dead, the website urls are usually sent to whatever that particular new format is.

Curiously, when you type in www.99x.com, it doesn’t go to its replacement, the harder-sounding 98.9/the Bone.

Rather, the page is still sitting there, inert, with the old jock lineup and the last few songs played. The station’s annual Mistletoe Jam with Bush is still happening December 4 at the Tabernacle.

The Twitter and Facebook 99X pages are still alive.

So you have to wonder if Cumulus is parking the station for now, perhaps plugging it in soon on 97.9, where the clearly temporary Q100, 20 at 97.9 is at the moment. The 97.9 signal is rather weak but it’s better than nothing. 99X sounded a bit more aggressive in its mix than Dave FM but it also played many acts Dave did, such as the Avett Brothers, Coldplay, Florence + the Machine and the Wallflowers.

I would bet if they did bring it back, it would sound softer to counter sister stations Rock 100.5 and 98.9/The Bone to try to draw some of the disenfranchised Dave fans. (Ironically, Dave in many ways was an attempt to pick up 99X fans who had grown up but still wanted to hear new music. That’s why they hired Steve Barnes, Yvonne Monet and Jimmy Baron.)

For many people. the format really died years ago and that the most recent incarnation on a weak signal was a shadow of its former self. And it kept moving around – first 97.9, then birefly 99.1, then 98.9. 99X’s heyday was from the mid-1990s through the mid-2000s.

I also was wondering if these two station’s departures could hurt venues such as Variety Playhouse.  Maybe not.

“I’m not sure if radio means that much to me,” said Brad Syna, who run Variety Playhouse, which plays a lot of acts that Dave and 99X highlighted. “But I’d rather have them here than not here. It’s weird. Do we need another top 40 or sports talk station in town?”

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