107.9 The Mix (WFMX) broadcasts adult contemporary hits and today's variety across central and eastern Maine from its home base in Skowhegan, simulcasting on additional signals including 103.1 in Dover-Foxcroft to widen its reach. The station has been part of the local media landscape since 1990, but Skowhegan's most talked-about landmark right now has nothing to do with radio at all.
From "Headquarters for Oldies" to today's hits
WFMX first signed on the air on March 17, 1990 under the call letters WHQO, running a satellite-fed oldies format branded "Headquarters for Oldies" for listeners across Skowhegan and the wider Somerset County area, according to station background compiled by Radio Station USA. The station has since rebranded as 107.9 The Mix under the tagline "Today's Best Variety," now running a full lineup of local hosts and morning-show features, positioning itself as central Maine's at-work listening choice rather than the oldies outlet it started as.
A name that means "watching place for fish"
Skowhegan takes its name from the Abenaki word for a fish-watching spot along the Kennebec River, a river that once powered the town's mills and shoe factories into one of central Maine's industrial hubs, according to background on the area from Wikipedia. The town has been the Somerset County seat since 1871 and still hosts the Skowhegan State Fair each August, the oldest continuously running state fair in the United States.
A world record now up for grabs
Skowhegan's best-known landmark towers 62 feet over the riverbank: a wooden sculpture of an Abenaki fisherman built by folk artist Bernard "Blackie" Langlais at his Cushing farm over three years, then trucked 75 miles to Skowhegan for installation in 1969. Billed locally as the tallest sculpture of its kind in the world, the piece became such a fixture that losing it would reshape the town's skyline, which is exactly what nearly happened when Skowhegan put the statue up for sale for one dollar in May 2025, seeking anyone willing to take on its upkeep, according to reporting from the Bangor Daily News.
Local radio in a town defined by its river
That is the backdrop 107.9 The Mix broadcasts into every day, a Kennebec River mill town whose biggest civic story in recent memory is the fate of a giant wooden statue rather than anything tied to the station's own programming. For a hits and variety station built around morning contests and community calendars, that kind of local texture, an oldies-format sign-on in 1990, a fish-named town, and a 62-foot landmark now looking for a new owner, is exactly the material small-market radio in Maine has always run on.