Marquette, Mich. (WZMQ) – For over 2 decades cars and homes around the upper peninsula have been listening to Sunny FM 101.9.
25 years ago Mark Evans and a group of radio broadcasters decided that the radio market in the upper peninsula was missing something.
Evans says “We wanted to have that hometown small type of station feel, meaning we carry the news, we carry highschool sports, clean it up, neaten it up and drop it on the FM band.”
The solution was to create Sunny FM, a station that would give that hometown feel Evans was looking for. The first of its kind in the area, the station paved the way for other stations in the market to follow its unique format
The station began doing in-studio interviews in 1998, something no other station in the area was doing at that time. The interviews alongside the musical formatting of the show gave Sunny FM a Uniqueness that drew in listeners.
In their quarter century of broadcasting, the crew at Sunny FM have seen a lot, covering everything from state championships to national tragedies like the September 11th terrorist attacks.
Evans told 19 News that Walt Lindala and himself were live on the air when the planes collided with the twin towers.
Events like this Evans says helped to cement Sunny FM as a news source within the immediacy of the moment before social media websites like twitter and Facebook, but as Evans says the media landscape is ever changing and nothing lasts forever,
“People come and go and people like yours truly eventually age out of this whole thing.” Says Evans “What’s gonna happen in the next 5,10, 15,20 nobody knows and that’s half the excitement.”
Evans might not know what the future holds for Sunny FM fans of the program can rest assured that no major changes are planned as of now.
He says that the main focus is celebrating the stations accomplishment and recognizing those who have supported them
