Wham! their tour of China, received its world premiere as part of the festivities. For several years after becoming a solo artist, Michael spoke negatively, in public, about his time with Wham, partly because of the negativity of intense media coverage on Ridgeley. Michael complained of the constant pressure he felt, and he claimed that the duo had been mistreated financially. He also spoke disparagingly about some of the videos and songs from the Wham repertoire, especially the video from "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go", and the songs from Fantastic. However, his perspective on the era softened somewhat in the
WHAM-TV already owned WUHF, it then spun off WOKR to the Ackerley Group, with the acquisition closing in April 1999. The station came under common ownership with WHAM radio (1180 AM) in June 2002 after the Ackerley Group merged with Clear Channel Communications, WHAM radio's owner. Speculation immediately started about whether WOKR would take on the WHAM-TV calls, which had been used on what is now WROC-TV from 1949 until 1956. On January 10, 2005 at 1:42 in the morning, channel 13 signed off-the-air for the last time as WOKR and returned to the air at 4:59 that same day as