Aggieland: Home Of The 12th Station
Everything Is Bigger In Texas, Including The Growth Of The FM Dial in Bryan/College Station. Let's Chart The Growth And Hear Some Audio From 9 Years Ago Today From KNDE, KORA-FM, KJXJ.
Edit: KORA-FM’s history is updated after initial publication thanks to the great Chris Ruff, the all-knowing historian of ratings nationally and Texas radio history.
Nine years ago on this day, February 26, I drove down to Texas A&M University to speak about working in the telecom industry to some junior and senior engineering students. A&M is the home of “The 12th Man” — as the NFL’s Seattle Seahawks found out several years ago when they tried to use that phrase, and A&M asserted its copyright protection on it.
I went to A&M in the late 1980s, and each time I return, it is stunning the amount of growth the Bryan/College Station metro has had since I was a freshman student. When I started at A&M, the two cities had a combined population around 100,000 people, with Bryan the larger of the two. Today, College Station has boomed to approximately 120,000 on its own, and Bryan has around 84,000.
The FM radio dial was wide open back then. There were only 5 local FM stations — A&M’s public radio KAMU-FM 90.9 College Station, AC KTSR 92.1 “Star 92” College Station, country KORA-FM 98.3 Bryan, top 40 KKYS 104.9 “Kiss 105FM” Bryan, and rimshooting from a small building on State Highway 6 south of Hearne TX was KHRN 94.3 “K94.” KHRN was a R&B outlet, except for mornings when it was Spanish-language programming. You don’t see that format very often.
Fun fact was KKYS had studios with a glass wall inside a rapidly declining Manor East Mall in Bryan in the 1980s. It was declining and losing tenants as Post Oak Mall in College Station opened up a few years before and became the primary mall for the region. For the few shoppers at Manor East, the DJs could be seen doing their shifts live on the air. The mall was torn down about a decade or so later.
Since my freshman year to the present day, the FM dial is now far from wide open. 12 new FM signals have since come on the air — either as new stations or signals that moved in from nearby rural communities. Those are just the full service FMs as there are also a number of low power FM translators that have come on the air relaying AM signals or FM HD subchannels.
In the late 1980s, the FCC created a new FM class called the C2s that allowed for medium power stations to be constructed. Until then, in this part of the country, stations were either class As (a maximum of 3 kw — and later 6 kw — of power on 328’ towers of less) or class C or C1s (100 kw signals). Class C2s could go up to 492’ 50 kw. The other rule change was that any frequency could be used for any class. Until then, the frequencies 92.1, 92.7, 93.5, 94.3, 95.3, 95.9, 96.7, 97.7, 98.3, 99.3, 100.1, 100.9, 101.7, 102.3, 103.1, 103.9, 104.9, 105.5, 106.3, and 107.7 could only be used for class A facilities. While class Cs and C1s could only be on the remaining frequencies 92.3, 92.5, 92.9, 93.1, and so on. Now, any class could be used on any open frequency. That allowed a massive realignment and growth of the number of signals in most markets across the US, with Bryan/College Station being a prime example. Aside from the 12 new signals, three of the original 5 FMs would change frequencies.
The Radio Dial From 1987 To 2024
Combining total chart-making geekdom and radio nerdism, I built the chart below showing the evolution of the B/CS dial. The vertical axis represents the FM dial and each dot on each row indicates when a signal for that frequency was on the air in Bryan/College Station. The size of each dot indicates the relative power — from the smallest, a class A signal, up to the highest power in the market, a class C2 facility (492’ tower and 50 kw of power — or equivalent). From left to right, the chart begins in 1987 with the 5 original signals and their original spots on the dial and their original power.
Some chart highlights are that KKYS moved from a weak class A on 104.9 to a class C2 on 104.7 in late 1989. KTSR signed off its 92.1 class A facility and would re-emerge on 95.1 as a C2 in early 1993, reborn as top 40 KNDE “Candy 95.” KHRN would move to 103.1 and slightly closer to the market as KVJM. A close look at the chart also shows the new 101.9 and 103.9 signals moving from bigger dots to smaller dots … both actually downgraded from their initial move-in facilities in order to have their transmitters moved slightly closer to Bryan/College Station (103.9 from a C2 to a C3, 101.9 from a C3 to an A).
From the bottom up on the far right side of the chart, the current dial is public KEOS 89.1 Bryan, religious (AFA relay) KLGS 89.9 College Station, KAMU-FM 90.9, religious (KHCB-FM Houston relay) KALD 91.9 Caldwell, contemporary Christian (KSBJ Houston relay) KWUP 92.5 Navasota, KNDE 95.1, country KAGG 96.1 “Aggie 96” Madisonville, KORA-FM 98.3, classic rock KNFX-FM 99.5 “the Fox” Bryan, country KVMK 100.9 “Maverick” Wheelock, R&B KBXT 101.9 “the Beat” Wixon Valley, KVJM 103.1 “103.1 Kiss FM,” contemporary Christian (EMF K-Love relay) KVLX 103.9 Franklin, KKYS 104.7 “Mix,” country KTTX 106.1 “K-Tex 106” Brenham, classic hits KAPN 107.3 Caldwell, and contemporary Christian KPWJ 107.7 “Peace 107.7” Kurten.
Now, lets take an audio trip back to the day of my enthralling speech to the engineering students on February 26 2015 with a couple of airchecks I recorded in my brief half day visit.
Aircheck: KNDE 95.1 “Candy 95.1”
History
As noted above, when I started at A&M, the station was AC KTSR “Star 92.” It would flip to album rock in 1990 and would keep the rock format until it signed off in February 1995. When it returned to the air, it signed on as top 40 KNDE “Candy 95” on the much stronger 95.1 facility, which is its present day format.
KNDE is a solid and still locally programmed station still today. It has won numerous small market awards over the years. One of the interesting things with some small market top 40s is they often are early on new songs. For songs that don’t end up taking off nationally and thus never get added to major market top 40 playlists, listening to airchecks 5, 10 or more years later of small market stations is interesting in that there always seems to be few songs that are not that familiar now.
About This Aircheck
I started the aircheck around 9:45AM before walking to over to one of the engineering buildings to speak. So, the aircheck is the final moments of that day’s “Morning Candy with Frito & Katy” morning show followed by midday DJ Ebony Williams.
Sara Bareilles/“Brave”
Legal ID: KNDE 95.1 College Station-Bryan
Meghan Trainor/“Lips Are Movin’”
Calvin Harris (Featuring Ellie Goulding)/“Outside”
Mary Lambert/“Secrets”
Katy Perry/“Roar”
Walk The Moon/“Shut Up And Dance”
Kelly Clarkson/“Heartbeat Song”
Will.I.Am/“#ThatPower”
Aircheck: KORA-FM 98.3
History
KORA-FM signed on in 1966, as the FM counterpart to then-KORA 1240 Bryan (now KTAM). The KORA-FM calls are the only call letters to ever be assigned to the 98.3 facility. Initially, KORA-FM has a variety/block format and evolved to easy listening - “beautiful music in full dimensional stereo 24 hours a day.” In January 1975, it moved to “Country Lovin’,” described in an article in the local paper at the time as “easy listening country and western.” It shifted to mainstream country by year-end, and it remains country to this day and still on its class A facilities on its original 98.3 dial position.
About This Aircheck
This aircheck starts at 12:36PM during the midday shift.
Zac Brown Band/“Toes”
Joe Nichols/“Yeah”
Jason Aldean/“When She Says Baby”
Luke Bryan/“I See You”
Legal ID: KORA 98.3 Bryan-College Station
Keith Urban/“Somewhere In My Car”
Toby Keith/“God Love Her”
Darius Rucker/“Homegrown Honey”
Billy Currington/“Hey Girl”
Jon Pardi/“When I’ve Been Drinkin’”
Aircheck: KJXJ 103.9
History
This station started out life as KCRM 103.1 Cameron TX.
In this case, in 1993, KCRM upgraded to a class C2 on 103.9 with a tower location between Bryan and Cameron that allowed it to add coverage to the Bryan/College Station. It couldn’t get closer without causing interference to KRBE 104.1 Houston’s mammoth full class C facilities. KCRM signed on the new 103.9 signal as AC “CD103.9,” later changing calls to KHLR, which also doesn’t have “CD” contained within them. KHLR would then become a top 40/modern rock hybrid in the mid-1990s as “103-9 Express FM.” In 1996, it evolved completely to modern rock as “103-9 the X.” It changed call letters to KXCS in 2001 to match the “103-9 the X” handle and then moved to rock as “103-9XCS, Everything That Rocks.”
In March 2007, the rock format signed off, and it flipped to adult hits KJXJ “103.9 Jack FM.” In 2009, KZTR 101.9 Franklin TX and KJXJ both downgraded to move closer to the B/CS market. KZTR (now KBXT) dropped from a class C3 to a class A and changed city of license to Wixon Valley since new facilities no longer covered Franklin with a city grade signal. In order for Franklin to not be left without a signal allocated to it, KJXJ changed its city of license from Cameron to Franklin and downgraded from a class C2 to class C3. Cameron still had an AM station allocated to it, so KJXJ moving didn’t render it “unserved,” at least by FCC accounting.
The “Jack” format lasted until 2010, when it flipped back to rock as “Rock 103-9.” The rock format lasted until early March 2015, when it flipped to sports, primarily clearing ESPN’s radio programming. The sports format was brief — it was back to classic rock the following year. In 2018, it was sold to non-commercial religious radio giant Educational Media Foundation, which converted it to the local relay of its national K-Love contemporary Christian format under the new calls KVLX, which it remains today.
About This Aircheck
You’ve been forewarned: This is about the least interesting aircheck there is. As noted above, KJXJ flipped from rock to ESPN in early March 2015…thus I happened to have recorded this a few days before the format flip. As it was on the verge of a flip, gone are the DJs and the imaging. It is literally just songs back to back, save for the legal ID.
Rise Against/“Savior”
Slash/“Anastasia”
Queensryche/“Jet City Woman”
Legal ID: KJXJ 103.9 Franklin-Bryan-College Station
Disturbed/“Land of Confusion”
Islander/“Coconut Dracula”
Folk Implosion/“Natural One”
Asking Alexandria/“Moving On”
George Thorogood & The Destroyers/“Bad To The Bone”
As always, the logos and other intellectual property belong to the stations. The recordings were made from over the air broadcasts.