Buzz Kill: KRBZ "96-5 The Buzz" Kansas City
First, Last, And In-Between Listens to 96-5 the Buzz
This past Thursday, Audacy announced its modern rock KRBZ 96.5 “Alt 96-5” Kansas City will flip to sports as KFNZ-FM “96-5 the Fan” on this coming Thursday, 15 August. The upcoming flip ends almost a quarter century of modern rock on 96.5. As it was a bit of an outlier that had a track record of taking chances on new bands and songs that many other modern rock outlets didn’t, before it becomes a thing of the past, here’s a small tribute of four airchecks from the beginning, middle, and now the end of KRBZ.
A Little History Of 96.5
The 96.5 facility in Kansas City traces its roots back to the evening 3 September 1959 when classical KXTR first signed on the air.
KXTR would have a four decade run on the 96.5 frequency. With the demographics of classical-formatted stations skewing well outside the more highly sought after younger demos advertisers seek, KXTR’s classical format and calls were shifted over (or dumped) to sister sports outlet, KKGM 1250 “the Game” in August 2000. Less than a year later, the KXTR calls and classical format were moved to expanded band KWSJ 1660 to live its final years. KXTR is long gone now as commercial classical stations have dwindled to near extinction. WRR 101.1 Dallas remains on a commercial allocation, but is now managed by pubcaster KERA-FM/TV and operated as a non-commerical operation. With that change, only KLEF 98.1 Anchorage remains today running a commercial classical format.
Replacing KXTR on the 96.5 spot on the dial was “96.5 the Buzz.”
Audio From the Beginning: Tuesday, 22 August 2000
KXTR gave way to “96.5 the Buzz” on 17 August 2000. This first aircheck, recorded on a 90 minute cassette, comes from a few days later on 22 August 2000. Technically, the calls are KXTR-FM at this point; the KRBZ calls became effective on 25 August. Fun Fact: “Buzz” is not the only handle you can extract from those calls. In the 1990s, the KRBZ calls belonged to a FM station on the Oregon coast to represent it being “Crab Radio 99.5, Home Of The Crab.”
The flip was reported in the trades as a flip from classical to “rock CHR” or “rock 40.” A more accurate description was that 96.5 the Buzz was a modern rock/top 40 hybrid. Basically, it was mostly modern rock tracks with a small sprinkling of pop — Bon Jovi’s “It’s My Life” in the case of this aircheck. Other more top 40-ish elements included the “Today’s Best Music” slogan and targeting top 40 KMXV 93.3 “Mix 93.3” as its rival.
The format was not at all a huge success to start with. It did evolve to modern AC (or hot AC or rock AC depending on the trade magazine you read) before it moved to modern rock. Even then, rumors of a format flip were reported in July 2003 (“Street Talk,” Radio & Records, 18 July 2003).
As is still a thing these days, the new format kicked off with a “5,000 songs in a row” run and no disc jockeys.
Audio: Thursday, 26 August 2010
Fast forward exactly a decade from August 2000 to August 2010…
Now comfortably in the modern rock format, KRBZ was rather exceptional in that it wasn’t afraid to take some chances on playing newer acts … and local area acts. For much of this era up to the “Alt” rebrand, it was not uncommon to hear songs on KRBZ that did not get much airplay (or any in some cases) on other modern rock outlets. In terms of imaging, “Today’s Best Music” is now “the Alternative.”
The aircheck is the “Church of Lazlo” PM drive show. As noted in the linked post at the beginning of this post, the show, which is still in PM drive, will slide over to clustermate AOR KQRC 98.9 with KRBZ’s flip to sports.
Audio: April 2017
Much like the August 2010 aircheck above, there is yet more examples of alternative rock heard here that wasn’t played a lot elsewhere — “everyone knows KC [Kansas City] breaks bands.”
Audio: Thursday, 8 August 2024
In September 2020, Entercom (now Audacy) rebranded KRBZ, along with stations in three other markets, to using the “Alt” brand. KRBZ lost the long-time “96-5 the Buzz” brand to become “Alt 96-5.”
This audio is from Thursday after it was announced that KRBZ is a lame duck with the new sports format coming in a week.
Station Profile
As always, the logos and other intellectual property belong to the stations. The recordings were made from over the air broadcasts.