Radio This Week Back Then #21: June 9-15
Houston's KHMX "Mix 96.5," "Rock 101" KLOL, KRBE; San Diego's KPRI; Beaumont/Port Arthur's KIOC "K106"; Dayton's WGTZ "Z93"
What was on the radio this week…back then. This is a weekly visit back to radio audio from this week in past years for those that enjoy radio history or those working in radio looking for promotional ideas, etc. If you enjoy these weekly audio rewinds, they take a lot of time to put together, so please do me a favor, subscribe, and share and pass it on. Thank you!
This week:
Hot AC KHMX 96.5 “Mix 96.5” Houston, June 14 1994
Rock KLOL 101.1 “Rock 101 KLOL” Houston, June 14 1994
Top 40 KRBE 104.1 Houston, June 14 1994
AAA KPRI 102.1 San Diego, June 10 2008
Top 40-rock KIOC 106.1 “Power Hits K106” Beaumont/Port Arthur, June 15 1994
Top 40 WGTZ 92.9 “Z93” Dayton, June 15 1990
30 years ago this week, a co-worker and I were asked last minute to fly from Dallas to London to spend a week consulting with the local IT organization at the company’s site west of London as they had quite a bit of unhappy customers. That required needing to get new passports in a hurry. At that time, there were only a handful of offices in the US that could do that, the closest being in downtown Houston. So, a quick trip to Houston was made — and thus this week is a little Houston heavy-from the airchecks I made of KHMX, KLOL, KRBE — and KIOC 90 miles to the east in the Beaumont/Port Arthur market. After getting the passport, and the airchecks, it was off to IAH for an overnight flight in business class on a double decker British Air jet to London. This was good timing since the end of business class travel for international travel at the company ended soon after. I mention that since it’s likely there might be some London airchecks in the mix for next week’s edition from that journey…
“Mix 96.5” Date: Tuesday, June 14, 1994 4:49PM Format: Hot AC DJ: Paul Christy
First up is KHMX, which was almost four years old at this point. Prior to becoming KHMX in the summer of 1990, the 96.5 facility had gone through multiple formats in the previous five years as rock KSRR “97 Rock” shifted to top 40-rock and then to short-lived top 40 KKHT “Hit 96.5” in 1986, which then moved to AC in 1987. In 1989, KKHT became dance “Energy 96.5,” which itself morphed into a dance/modern rock hybrid the following year for a bit before temporarily changing to modern rock “96.5” for a brief period in 1990 until KHMX debuted. KHMX has been durable…it is now about to celebrate its 34th anniversary in the format.
Bryan Adams/”Summer Of ‘69”
Mariah Carey/”Anytime You Need A Friend”
Legal ID: KHMX 96.5 Houston
Lipps, Inc./”Funkytown”
Journey/”Don’t Stop Believin’”
Gloria Estefan/”I See Your Smile”
Elton John/”I Don’t Wanna Go On With You Like That”
Bonnie Raitt/”Love Sneakin’ Up On You”
Joshua Kadison/”Beautiful In My Eyes”
The Eagles/”Take It Easy”
“Rock 101 KLOL” Date: Tuesday, June 14, 1994 Format: Rock DJs: Outlaw Dave Andrews, Scott T Phillips
KLOL’s rock days begin back in 1970 when it flipped from simulcasting then-sister KTRH 740 as KTRH-FM to progressive rock under the KLOL calls. The KLOL calls resemble “K101,” which it used as its handle in the early 1970s. As with many progressive outlets, it evolved to AOR. It outlasted several competitors — KILT-FM 100.3 (which went from rock to country in 1981) and then KSRR 96.5 “97 Rock” as its early to mid-1980s competitor. KLOL moved to classic rock in the late 1990s before reverting back to rock. Its days playing rock ended in November 2004, when it flipped to “hurban” (Spanish-language hip-hop and dance and reggaeton) as “Mega 101.”
In a bit of fun, in March 1988, just ahead of a large radio convention coming to Dallas, KLOL leased a billboard along southbound US75/Central Expressway in Dallas with its famous runaway radio logo (the same logo as above), the tag line “Houston’s Album Rocker,” and the words “…not available in this market.” The billboard was not far from D/FW rocker KTXQ “Q102”’s studios. Unfortunately, I cannot find a decent scan of a picture of that billboard; the one picture of it I can find from the Houston Chronicle archives (March 25 1988 edition which had a story on it, “Billboard a sign of radio rivalry,” on it) is a really poor scan. The Chronicle story noted it was targeting Q102 as part of the rivalry between the two stations and the larger rivalry between Dallas and Houston.
Judas Priest/”You’ve Got Another Thing Comin’”
Judas Priest/”Living After Midnight”
Guns N’ Roses/”Welcome To The Jungle”
Guns N’ Roses/”Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door”
Cheech & Chong/”Earache My Eye”
Legal ID: KLOL 101.1 Houston
Bad Company/”Can’t Get Enough”
Bad Company/”Bad Company”
Spin Doctors/”Cleopatra’s Cat”
Spin Doctors/”Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong”
Mötley Crüe/”Misunderstood”
“104 KRBE” Date: Tuesday, June 14, 1994 (PM drive) Format: Top 40 DJ: Scott Sparks
This is the 21st edition of this weekly bit of aircheck scattershooting, and it’s the 5th time I’ve put up a KRBE aircheck. Having lived in Texas since the mid-1980s and KRBE’s longevity, I have 35 airchecks of KRBE, so it comes up more often than not when I query my aircheck list for any given week.
Last month, in the 17th edition, the aircheck in that week’s edition was the introduction to KRBE’s “Hits. Without The Hype” era. It is still in effect in this aircheck though they quit using that slogan. All the other elements — no amped up DJs, no jingles, no talking over the intros and back ends of songs, announcing all the songs, etc. — are still in place in this mid-June 1994 aircheck. But changes were coming soon as this is the last 1994 aircheck I have of them as a mainstream top 40 as a few months later they moved to a top 40/modern rock hybrid, as detailed in the 5th edition of this little Substack.
In hindsight — as this aircheck is now 30 years old this week — KRBE was somewhat forward thinking. With the “Power 104” brand drop and the move to the hype-free production in the early 1990s, KRBE also added pop culture interstitials periodically during the day (not just segments on a morning drive show), like “Earth Beat” and the “Hollywood Dirt” one on this aircheck, well ahead of the Internet taking off and a few decades ahead of TikTok and YouTube shorts. If you checked out my Dublin dial scan from traveling there last week, Spin had a 2024 take on those interstitials at the start of the June 2 aircheck.
The Cranberries/”Dreams”
Toni Braxton/”Breathe Again”
En Vogue/”Free Your Mind”
Prince/”U Got The Look”
Legal ID: KRBE 104.1 Houston
Madonna/”I’ll Remember”
Seal/”Prayer For The Dying”
Spin Doctors/”Two Princes”
UB40/”Here I Am (Come And Take Me)”
The Smashing Pumpkins/”Disarm”
Morrissey/”The More You Ignore Me, The Closer I Get”
“102.1 KPRI” Date: Tuesday, June 10, 2008 1:36PM Format: AAA DJ: Meg
This aircheck is about half way through KPRI’s existence. It had been a decent AAA outlet, but, in 2015, it was sold to Educational Media Foundation as part of its continuing national expansion of its K-Love contemporary Christian format. As is pretty much the rule, the staff and local programming were dropped in favor of passing along that national K-Love feed. EMF replaced the KPRI calls with KLVJ.
Steve Winwood/”Dirty City”
Guns N’ Roses/”Paradise City”
John Butler Trio/”Zebra”
Crosby, Stills & Nash/”Long Time Gone”
Legal ID: KPRI 102.1 Encinitas
Alanis Morissette/”Hands Clean”
Staind/”It’s Been Awhile”
Dave Matthews Band/”Everyday”
Dire Straits/”So Far Away”
Duffy/”Mercy”
Los Lonely Boys/”My Way”
“Power Hits K106” Date: Wednesday, June 15, 1994 9:56AM Format: Top 40-rock DJ: Chris Chambers
I did a long write-up on KIOC for a February 17 1995 aircheck in the 4th edition. As with that one, this aircheck also falls during K106’s mid-1990s top 40/rock hybrid days. The 2/17/95 aircheck has a much better music log than this one, which — 30 years later — is full of also-ran hits long forgotten. I completely forgotten about some of these (Roxette, Richard Marx). I don’t remember many top 40 outlets playing anything off those then new 1994 Pink Floyd and Boston albums.
Babble/”Take Me Away”
Van Halen/”When It’s Love”
Pink Floyd/”Take It Back”
Boston/”I Need Your Love”
ZZ Top/”Give It Up”
Soul Asylum/”Somebody To Shove”
Roxette/”Sleeping In My Car”
Collective Soul/”Shine”
Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers/”Refugee”
Richard Marx/”The Way She Loves Me”
Spin Doctors/”Cleopatra’s Cat”
“Z93” Date: Friday, June 15, 1990 10:49AM Format: Top 40 DJ: Rod Scott
The thing I remember most about Z93 was its infamous humorous legal ID. Licensed to Eaton OH, which can sound like “eatin’,” for a period of time, Z93 played on that and IDed as “WGTZ Eaton-Dayton-Springfield alive!” Alas, that version of the ID is not on this aircheck someone sent me several decades ago on a cassette that had scoped airchecks of various CHRs from around the country.
Johnny Gill/”Rub You The Right Way”
Legal ID: WGTZ 92.9 Eaton-Dayton
Babyface/”It’s No Crime”
Sinéad O’Connor/”Nothing Compares 2 U”
Nu Shooz/”I Can’t Wait”
Michael Bolton/”When I’m Back On My Feet Again”
Fine Young Cannibals/”She Drives Me Crazy”
Aerosmith/”What It Takes”
Madonna/”Hanky Panky”
As always, the logos and other intellectual property belong to the stations. The recordings were made from over the air broadcasts.
Did the "four in a row with no stupid DJ talk" at Z93 apply to morning drive, too?