Radio This Week Back Then #29: August 4-10
KHYI “Y95”/“Power 95” and KEGL “the Eagle” Dallas/Fort Worth, KWKH-FM “Big Dog 94-5” and KTUX “99X” Shreveport, KNDE “Candy 95” Bryan/College Station, and WNYZ “Z98-7” Utica/Rome
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, those working in radio looking for promotional ideas, or stations looking to re-find lost audio of their heritage. 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!
ICYMI, earlier this week I posted quite a few throwback airchecks of WPOW Miami and WJHM Orlando from their original runs — before they became rhythmic throwback stations this year.
In this week’s end of week rewind…
Dallas/Fort Worth | KHYI 94.9 “Y95” (1990) and “Power 95” (1991), KEGL 97.1 “the Eagle” (1991, 1992)
Shreveport | KWKH-FM 94.5 “Big Dog 94-5” (1996), KTUX 98.9 “99X, the Rebel Rocker” (1996)
Bryan/College Station | KNDE 95.1 “Candy 95” (2005, 2022)
Utica/Rome | WNYZ 98.7 “Z98-7” (1989)
Related: Other posts with KHYI airchecks
By the fall of 1984, D/FW all of a sudden had a three-way CHR race between KAFM 92.5 “92 1/2 KAFM,” KEGL 97.1 “All Hit 97.1 KEGL, the Eagle,” and KTKS 106.1 “Kiss 106.” Three finally reduced to two in early 1986 when KAFM relaunched as KZPS “Z92.5, Your Power Station” and then shifted towards AC/jazz after a couple of months leaving KTKS and KEGL to battle each other.
After contemporary Christian KLTY 94.9 was sold, the new owners decided to make CHR again a three station battle when KLTY flipped to CHR KHYI “Y95” in September 1986. It launched with a lot of attitude — an hourly “Y95, get out of the way wimp!” call to action and more lasers than a “Star Wars” sequel in the imaging. It would be KTKS that would fall this time — shifting towards AC the following summer (though they denied that to the industry trades, but readers here know better) and then to smooth jazz KOAI “106.1 the Oasis” in the fall.
Easy listening KMEZ-FM 100.3 would flip to R&B-dance KJMZ 100.3 “100.3 Jamz” in December 1988 that, in its early years, had some overlap in playlist with KHYI and KEGL.
7 August 1990 Aircheck, as “Y95”
First up, a weeknight shift including Y95’s local “Top 9 At 9.”
8 August 1991 Aircheck, as “Power 95”
In April 1991, KHYI shifted to dance and rebranded as “Power 95.” It did not last long. Four months later for this aircheck, they had already shifted back to mainstream top 40. KHYI’s days are numbered as well here. In the following month, they dropped the “Power 95” handle for just “94.9” as their branding and a month after that, KHYI flipped to oldies KODZ “Oldies 94.9.”
Station Profile
Since 2000, the 94.9 facility has been home, for the second time, to contemporary Christian KLTY.
Related: Other posts with KEGL airchecks
For much of its 1980s run as a CHR, KEGL was fairly rock-leaning. It was my station of choice in high school. These airchecks from the early 1990s are from, what I like to call, the #NotMyKEGL era.
4 August 1991 Aircheck
Towards the end of 1989 and into 1990, KEGL started adding in dance and R&B product it largely would have excluded in the past. As I was just back from college for the summer interning, it was jarring to hear KEGL sound like this compared to the years before. It’s not that is sounds bad by any stretch; it’s just not what the brand had been about for almost a decade.
8 August 1992 Aircheck
A year later, and KEGL is kind of back to its old self. Two months before this aircheck, it dismissed the staff, including Kidd Kraddick, and went into a weekend of stunting with songs by the Eagle, and went back to its top 40/rock roots. I wrote up the relaunch and put up the audio earlier this year (the first of 3 times “the Eagle” brand has been rebooted on 97.1).
Musically, it more fits the brand, but it lost some of the jingles and fun in the relaunch.
CHR in the early 1990s was struggling nationwide with a couple hundred stations dropping the format. In Dallas, KEGL was the lone CHR at this point — and now a top 40/rock outlet. With no mainstream CHR in the market, smooth jazz KOAI 106.1 returned to CHR and the “Kiss FM” brand in November as KHKS. Turning the tables, KEGL would be the one to exit the following year.
A couple of notes on this aircheck:
Russ Martin is the DJ. KEGL would add Howard Stern’s syndicated show in September. Martin would eventually fill that time slot when KEGL and Stern parted ways in 1997. From that, Martin would have a couple of decades doing his own hot talk show, with its own following, until his death a few years ago.
Various places show KEGL’s June 1992 relaunch was a format change to AOR. From the relaunch audio and this audio, it is clear KEGL is still between CHR and AOR. There are rock acts with pop songs that never charted on the AOR charts (Bryan Adams and Richard Marx tunes on this aircheck) KEGL was playing at the time. The back-to-school promo is more in line with a CHR. KEGL actually shifted to AOR in July 1993 — going “pure rock and roll” and shedding the remaining pop titles then. Both Billboard and Radio & Records still had KEGL as a CHR reporter into 1993. R&R actually moved both KEGL and KKYK 103.7 Little Rock, which also went through a similar top 40-to-rock 40-to-AOR evolution in the early 1990s, from being top 40 reporters to AOR reporters in their 9 July 1993 edition. Industry trade The M Street Journal also recorded the KEGL shift from rock CHR to AOR in their 14 July 1993 edition.
Station Profile
The 94.5 facility is Shreveport’s first FM station, starting way back in 1948 as the offshoot of The Shreveport Times newspaper and KWKH 1130, which itself had already been on the air since the 1920s.
When KTUX (below) shifted from top 40 to a mix of 1970s-1990s rock hits in December 1992, Shreveport became another market in the US that lacked a mainstream CHR. Country KWKH-FM would fill the gap in August 1996 when it flipped to top 40 “Big Dog 94.5.” I recorded this five days after the flip. At this point, it was running without DJs with the “official” launch coming the following Monday.
In this sort of preview period before the 12 August launch, it’s not terribly exciting — the imaging is a bit rough and the music library was mostly a lot of recurrents.
The call letters would change from the heritage KWKH calls to KRUF a couple of months later — KRUF apparently for “ruf, ruf” — the sound of a barking “Big Dog.” The “Big Dog” handle only stuck around for a few years as it was dropped in favor of “K94-5,” which remains its current branding.
Station Profile
Related: Other posts with KTUX airchecks
KTUX signed on the air as top 40 “Fun Radio Tux 99” in April 1985. In December 1992, it jettisoned the dance and R&B product and went to a “hit rock” format of pop rock, rock, and classic rock from the previous 20 years. In June 1994, after a day and half of looping Billy Idol’s “Rebel Yell,” KTUX flipped to AOR “99X, the Rebel Rocker.” This aircheck is two years into 99X’s first run.
KTUX dropped the 99X brand in late 1999 for “Rock 99,” only to return to “99X” a couple of years later. 99X’s second run lasted until January 2018 when KTUX flipped to classic rock “Highway 98.9,” which remains as its current format.
Station Profile
KNDE traces back its roots to 60 years ago this week when it became Bryan/College Station’s first local commercial FM station, signing on the air as WTAW-FM on 92.1 MHz, the new FM sister to WTAW 1150. It played a mix of classical and standards.
Only a class A, during its KTSR days, the station tried to upgrade a few times. It originally proposed getting its allocation changed from 92.1A to 94.9C2, but the FCC nixed that in 1991 by letting D/FW market KHYI 94.9 (above) upgrade from a C1 to full C instead. The next attempt made more progress as the FCC approved a move to 107.3C3. That was never built out; instead, KTSR sought to move to 95.1 as a stronger C2 and force the then unbuilt 95.1 Caldwell TX to 107.3A (the present day KAPN 107.3). Ultimately, the FCC approved that. In late February 2003, rock KTSR signed off its 92.1 spot, changed calls, and launched the 95.1 facility as top 40 KNDE “Candy 95” in early March.
The KNDE calls and associated “Candy” name had been done in several markets before, though with different formats — a progressive one in Sacramento in the 1970s (now KIID 1470), a “Candy Country” in Tucson in the early 1980s (now KIIM-FM 99.5), and a hot AC in Reno (now KRFN 100.9) in the mid-90s. In terms of longevity and ratings, this one in Bryan/College Station has been the most successful “Candy.”
Since its launch in March 2003, KNDE has been a ratings winner with its CHR format. With a handful of exceptions, it has been at the top of the twice-a-year Nielsen surveys since it came on the air. Lately, it has been nominated for the National Association of Broadcasters’ annual Marconi radio awards (nominated for CHR Station Of The Year in 2023 and Small Market Station Of The Year this year).
By coincidence, I happened to have airchecks of KNDE taped on the same date (August 6), day of week (Saturday), and time (midday shift) from different years. Up first is one from 2005. That is followed by one exactly 17 years later in 2022.
6 August 2005 Aircheck
6 August 2022 Aircheck
Station Profile
Between the Florida airchecks earlier this week and the Texas and Louisiana airchecks above, this week was pretty heavy on radio from the Southern US, so I thought I toss in one from a different region.
From the small market files comes this curious aircheck from the Utica/Rome market. A few months after this aircheck, WNYZ became AC WLZW “Lite 98.7.” Not long before this aircheck, WNYZ was CHR “New York Z.” In this aircheck, it was something in-between as “20 years of classic hits” and “the hits of a whole generation” that was about 1/3rd current hits and the rest being classic hits of the 1970s and 1980s.
As always, the logos and other intellectual property belong to the stations. The recordings were made from over the air broadcasts.