Note, this post is copied exactly as is from my previous blog, the Radio Crytic, with only a few spelling errors corrected. There is one update in here as well. I originally published this on July 28, 2021. Perhaps a fresh listen to some of these is in order.
I have all the big radio apps on my phone, iHeart, TuneIn, Radio Pup, and Audacy. I don’t have any favorites on Audacy, and the last time I added anything to any of the others was last summer when I finally added the previously reviewed KRRY Y101 Quincey, IL to Radio Pup. The bulk of my some 40 stations were added between December 2011 and August 2013, with a few random ones since then. A couple months ago, I decided to take a fresh listen to them and see if I should delete any, since I don’t listen to the majority of them anymore. This week, it’s the stations that are still around, while next week we’ll take a look at the few stations that have changed format since the last update.
KPPT Lincoln County, OR
This station is one of the few I actually heard over the air before I heard it online, as we discovered it on a road trip down the Oregon coast in 2006. This station wasn’t actually in my listening project, but I was in Lincoln County in February, in addition to hearing this station shortly after it rebranded from Boss FM to The Otter. While I still think this is one of the better stations on the coast, what made this station so special was the old music it played, music that had disappeared from stations in the bigger markets. Now that that is gone and has been replaced with Local Radio Networks programming, there’s not much to hear here. Now that I live in Vancouver, WA; I’m sure I’ll be getting down that way more often and will still listen to this when I’m there, but despite it being one of the few if not the only station streaming out of that area, it’s not something I’ll listen to from outside the county.
Jammin’ 105.5 KKKJ Klamath Falls, OR
This is one of the strangest stations in my listening portfolio. I don’t exactly remember how I discovered this one, I think I just chose a random station from the list of Oregon stations on TuneIn. In any event, when I discovered this station in July of 2013, I was about at the peak of my CHR listening, but I still had to listen to this station on TuneIn, because there wasn’t a good way to tell what song was playing otherwise, and this was a new music driven CHR to the point that much of the music played never really reached the mainstream. Sure the big hits were here, but if it was on the Billboard charts despite not getting much traction at other stations, it was also here. With the rise of many more music services since then, I had no idea what to expect when I flipped this on. To my surprise, what I got was a station that sounded like a
rhythmic-leaning CHR would have in January 2011, and I mean that literally. Outside of the one promo I heard that consisted of songs from 2015-16 and the live remote from a marijuana dispensory, you’d think you’d entered a time warp. As this is when I first started really getting into CHR, I think this is a keeper, at least for now, I just find it really strange that they’re still using new music sounders but playing 10 year old music. Most throwback stations span an entire decade or more, not just one year. We’ll wait and see what this station does in the future.
Update, upon listening further, the strategy is even more strange than it appeared in this listen. This station will play a two-hour block of music from 2010-2011, then a two-hour block of music spanning a decade from roughly 1997-2007 with a heavy focus around 2002-03, then play an hour of music from 2019-2020.
Hot 101.9 KRSQ Billings, MT
Just after I graduated high school in the summer of 2012, we took a road trip to Mount Rushmore. By this time, my status as a radio geek had been firmly cemented. After all, I had just finished a really stressful senior project, the final result was a one hour radio show. Today, I could probably put together a similar project in less than half the time, but that’s another post for another time. I think I may have just given myself another idea. Anyway, back to the story. The second night of our road trip, we were scheduled to spend the night in Billings. In the weeks leading up to the trip, I began searching for radio I’d be hearing. One stop was Tophour, where I found an ID for KRSQ from 2003. So, I looked them up and pulled up their stream. As I had just graduated high school, I would listen to just about any CHR. This one I particularly liked because it also threw in quite a few rhythmic golds that other CHRs may have played occasionally, but were more prominant here. Over the years, they’ve changed where the golds are, but they’re still there, which means this station is a keeper.
Fly 92.3 WFLY Albany, NY
I discovered this station in early July 2013, and liked it. They changed their imaging voice in early 2014, and I don’t think they’ve been the same since. That being said, I liked a lot of the golds they played when I listened to them in this last round, so I think I’ll keep them. I’m also considering adding their sister station, WSPK in Poughkeepsie, to my list. Musically, that station isn’t nearly as good, but they put more into content.
Kissin 92.5 KSYN Joplin, MO
On Thanksgiving day 2012, I was looking around for stations on TuneIn and I wanted to listen to KSME in Fort Collins, CO. Instead, TuneIn redirected me to KSYN. I’ve since found that Zimmer Radio, this station’s owner, is one of the better companies, as another of their stations is going to get a mention further down. Though I liked KSYN the moment I heard it, I didn’t listen to it all that often in the months that followed, until the following summer, when I’d pull them up on TuneIn but not often on the computer. I’m on the fence about whether I want to keep them there as to me they’re sounding a little on the automated side these days. I think I’ll have to listen to them longer and then decide.
B93.3 WLDB Milwaukee, WI
Milwaukee used to be one of my favorite markets. It’s highly unusual for me to have three favorite stations in one market, but when I took a listen to this station in the spring of 2013 via the now defunct Aircheck Downloads, I liked it enough to sample it live, and added it to my favorites shortly afterwords. In March of 2015, they shifted to Hot AC as Trending Radio 93.3, which I didn’t mind, though I probably wouldn’t have replaced the 80s cuts with extremely rhythmic tracks. Texturally though, it felt similar enough to the former AC format with a couple sort of out of place rhythmic tracks an hour. This didn’t last however, and a year or so later, they were back to AC under new management. I wasn’t impressed with this new station the first time I heard it, and continue to be underwhelmed. They’re playing quite a bit of good music as I write this, but I’m board with the overall presentation. I have listened to them the past couple of holiday seasons, and I’ve found I don’t mind them then, but will probably remove them from my favorites, as neither WMXS or WTRV, two of my other favorites that time of year are in my favorites list on their respective apps.
KOYY Y94 Fargo, ND
This station had been mentioned in various places when reading about Midwest CHRs, but I finally decided to sample it after seeing its streaming link posted in a list of all streaming CHRs on Radio Discussions. It quickly became a regular listen, particularly in the evenings. Like previously mentioned KSYN and not yet mentioned WXSS in Milwaukee, I found the audio processing on this station not over the top and actually quite pleasant to listen to. In the summer of 2013, James Ingstad sold the station to Midwest Communications, and for about the first year and a half, nothing major changed. I’m not sure why, but eventually I quit listening, and like most of the stations mentioned here, I moved on to other stations. Meanwhile, Midwest was at work making changes, replacing Scott Mathews with another imaging voice among others. I’d expect that a CHR with very over the top imaging would be my favorite, but that’s not and never has been Y94. When I came back to the station a couple times in the past, I was bored, and with the exception of the all request throwback lunch, remains the case today. I’ll have to give this station another listen in the evening to see what they’re sounding like then.
Energy 94.1 KTFM San Antonio, TX
Why did I set this station? I don’t know. I want to say it was fall of 2011 when I discovered this station, then owned by Border Media. At the time, it was pretty easy to switch between boards on Radio Discussions, and occasionally, I’d explore other boards to see if my favorite station in said market was getting any mentions. Austin and San Antonio are one board, and at the time my favorite station in Austin was the late KFMK, 105.9 The River, now a K-Love outlet. When I first looked at that board, it was a couple months after the frequency swap that sent the Hot AC Christian hybrid river format to 105.9 had taken place, and I don’t remember seeing it on the board, meaning it had probably already gotten pushed to the second page, though I think I saw that thread eventually. Anyway, someone had started a thread about how KTFM, a rhythmic CHR, had tweeked to a pop lean. If I remember correctly, it got a few more mentions in the following months, so I decided to sample it. I had thought at that time it had completely shifted to a CHR pop station, but in any event, I figured rhythmic-leaning pop stations were right up my alley, especially with the station’s dance focus and where pop music was at the time. That’s the only reason I can think of that I would have set the station, and as I said at the top of this post, I really haven’t done a cleanout. In this and previous listens though, I haven’t really found anything compelling about this station, so I think it’s finally going to go.
Power 94 KXIX Bend, Or
I’m not sure what attracted me to this station so strongly, but it was one of my regulars in 2012-2013. The story of discovering this station and the entire Bend market is an unusual one as well. Many years ago, I participated in a summer program at the Washington State School for the Blind, ironically only a 12 minute drive from where I’m currently living. This particular year, someone from Prineville was there, and I asked him what stations he generally listened to, and he mentioned Power 94. Many years later, the week after I graduated high school in 2012, I finally decided to sample the station, as well as competitor Wild 107.7 KWXS, which had come on as a new signal to the market just a few months earlier. That gives me another idea for a post, stations I used to listen to a lot but never wound up in my favorites for some reason. KWXS would be one of those stations. Back to Power 94 though, there’s nothing here different from when I started listening to them in 2012. Yes, same imaging, same jingles, same jocks, everything. I would find out just a couple months ago that the jingles are from the Kiss108 2006 package from Reel World. Outside of Reel World One, this is my favorite package. I know the one thing that turned me off about KXIX was when owner Bend Radio Group killed the high quality AAC streams for lower quality MP3 streams. If they’d bring back a higher quality option, I’d listen more. To non-technical people that see a Flash stream, Flash is just the method used to embed a player on a webpage, and has largely been replaced by HTML5. The underlying stream is still MP3, AAC, or WMA. While we’re on the topic of audio, I’m noticing their stereo is slanted a bit to the left as well. A friend described the signal as crunched a few years ago, but I’ll still take that over the current stream.
94.5 Roxy KRXY Shelton, WA
Serving Thirston, Pierce, and Mason counties at the southern end of Puget Sound, this station is one of the more unique. I want to say it was 2009 when I discovered this station. I had my BrailleNote with me one time coming back from my grandparents, and around Olympia, I turned on the radio and stumbled across this station. A couple years later, for some unknown reason, I developed a slight obsession with both this station and sister KITI-FM Live 95 down the road in Lewis County. We’ll get to that station soon, but for now, KRXY is still the same station it was back then. I’m not too happy that they seem to have cut back on their imaging, but what imaging is there is still the same as what was there in 2011. It’s also worth noting that well respected radio writer Shawn Ross gave this station a mention in one of his columns. I’ll have to ask him to do a fresh listen column. As for regularly streamed stations, this is also the closest
geographically to me as a class C signal could easily reach the place I used to live, but not a small class A such as this. Despite the lack of imaging, I think it’s a keeper.
94.5 WPST Trenton, NJ
This is another one of my older discoveries. I have a friend in the Philadelphia area who I have known since 2008, and he can get this station, so I’ve known of its existence since then. That being said though, I didn’t sample it until December of 2011 when I got my first smartphone. Back then, at night, they were running a now discontinued service called Jelli, which I found quite good. I liked that concept anyway, and musically it fit quite well here. During the day though, I could never get into it. It’s also worth noting that this station is the most sold since I found it, as it’s on its third owner since I discovered it. Listening today, I thought initially it would be removed completely, but I think actually it will move to the next tear, meaning that it will be removed from any app’s favorites, but will still be on my mental list of stations to sample occasionally.
Live 95 KITI-FM Winlock, WA
This is the older-leaning sister to KRXY mentioned above. Of the stations now in my TuneIn presets, this one is probably the one I’ve known about the longest. I don’t even remember when I discovered this thing it’s been so long. I want to say it was around 2004 or so. I know that it was on a trip down to my grandparents. I think this is the station that we discovered one time when it was just my mom and I one nice spring day coming down in our van, but didn’t realize what it was again until years later. In fact, we had it on coming back from Portland once, and I thought this station, always having been known as Live 95, was what was then KXJM in Portland, ironically now using the Live 95.5 name under the KBFF calls. I also thought this was Classic Hits at first, as that is a major component of this station’s format. They also seem to have cut back on their imaging, even more than KRXY, which is why I’m not sure what to do with it. Just like KRXY, maybe even more so, this station and its sister AM are very community oriented. While not present here, the AM even runs top of hour news from ABC and local headlines several times a day. Unlike some other small market stations of this type though, their updates are of a reasonable length. One station I heard took nearly half an hour for its noon news update, and another for the 5:00 news. Another station ran so many agriculture reports and other spots that it took 45 minutes to get through all of it. With KITI, you’ve got news, sports, and weather and you’re back into music in 15 minutes. Both may also be moved to my occasional listen mental list, I haven’t decided yet, though the AM was always there.
95.7 BEN FM WBEN Philadelphia, PA
I’ve known about this station since I’ve known about WPST, but didn’t decide to first sample it until the fall of 2011. At the time, I was using the radio on iTunes quite a bit, and this is the first station to get a review here that I decided to sample this way. Unless you count the above mentioned Live 95, this is one of only two Variety Hits stations in my favorites at the moment, the other one being 106.5 The Arch in St. Lewis. I thought WBEN had a full airstaff, but it looks like they’re doing what they’ve always done, which is simply having someone there to take phone calls or give text keywords as needed. I quit listening to this station in 2013 because they dropped the voice who typically did the snarky one-liners and replaced their transitions to commercials with a generic female-voiced 95.7 Ben FM. Listening now though, they are just as good musically as they were back then, and have a few one-liners with a new voice. That means this is probably a keeper.
Magic 98.9 WSPA Spartanburg, SC
I’ve always had a weird relationship with this station, maybe the day I discovered it has something to do with that. I can’t remember whether it was because it happened to be spring break or whether it was one of the many Fridays that I had off seemingly every year. It must have been spring break, because if I remember right, it was a Tuesday when I found this station. I remember that the name of one of my sister’s classmates had been announced in church as having recently died. It came out fairly quickly that she was rather brutally murdered. My sister was at college at the time and actually I think was a year behind this person, so didn’t come home. I didn’t know her well at all, but I could probably pick her mother out in a crowd, as she would sing at church regularly. My dad went to her funeral, but I decided not to go. It must have been that I was listening to either the radio or music on my iPod when it died and needed to be plugged in. I decided to browse the AC category on the iTunes radio and stumbled on this station, which gradually grew on me over time, but I’ve been in kind of weird moods on more than one occasion while listening. Today was fairly normal, and I still didn’t think it was that bad. That being said, the AC format in general has evolved in such a way that I think knocks stations like this and KMGL down a few notches in general. This, though, is a keeper.
99.7 The Point KZPT Kansas City, MO/KS
I took a personal finance class in the second half of the 2010-11 school year, and one of our projects had to do with the stock market. We had $1,000 to invest in two stocks, and we had to track their performance over a couple of months. My two were Microsoft and then Entercom. In the final report, one of the requirements was to go to the company’s website and find a recent news article. Mine for Entercom was highlighting the attendance of sister station 98.9 The Rock’s Rockfest, but I did see that the recent flip of KZPT, which I had read about a week or so earlier, was there as well. So, I decided to give the station a listen and I liked it. When I got a smartphone that December, like many of the stations on this list, it was one of my many initial presets, sort of a physical notation of what stations I liked that has grown significantly out of date. Since 2013 though, I’ve been uncertain about this station. Sometimes, I’m bored by it, other times it’s tolerable. Musically, it’s still as good as always, but I find its personalities a bit on the boring side. That being said, I can’t decide what to do with it. It doesn’t sound like I would have liked the station at 98.1 it replaced at all, KUDL, or as some on Radio Discussions called it at the time, K-Dull.
KOSI 101.1 Denver, CO
Like the Denver weather, this station has probably gone through the most dramatic swings in my opinion of its sound in the time I’ve known about it. When I first got my BrailleNote in 2006, the introductory webpage that was its default homepage linked to a site called Mike’s Radio World. About a year later, the site’s owner split it up into sites by region, with U.S. stations moving to usliveradio.com. About a year and a half or so later, that site was dramatically paired down to include only about 200 stations. One of these was KOSI, and I can’t remember why I decided to sample it at the time, but I did and liked it. I want to say this was in 2009. For some reason though, it was never a regular listen, though I did record it several times. I will never forget Christmas of 2012, when the station really sounded good. Since then, it’s been downhill, to the point where today I don’t even feel like it deserves a spot in the presets.
Hot 101.5 WPOI Tampa, FL
I think I’ve known about this station since it launched, or at least fairly shortly after that in 2011. Back then, a lot of your second CHRs, particularly those owned by CBS, were much more rhythmic than their competitors, and WPOI was no exception, though I’ve heard WFLZ and it doesn’t take much to be more rhythmic than them. It wasn’t till my 19th birthday that I decided to sample this station, and many years later, till I decided to give WFLZ a listen. A criticism I’ve always had about Seattle local KQMV is that their jocks only talk over music and don’t get to express their personalities much. Despite this, they’re still the only Seattle local I have set in any app, despite having several set in my radios that have that function. The reason I bring up Seattle is that I found WPOI quite similar musically at the time, with a bit more personality. Since then though, I feel like they’ve drifted apart musically, and I’m not sure if WPOI deserves a preset anymore, but I can’t decide. Regardless, Cox as a company isn’t one I’ve found many stations I like from, aside from the All 80s Point stations, of which they ran several years ago, including the one we discovered in Houston when we were there in 2004. For a while, WPOI was the only one of their stations in my presets, and still is only one of two. Ironically, WPOI stands for Point, and was one of the last stations to continue to use that branding, though I didn’t know about it until the flip.
103.7 Kiss FM WXSS Milwaukee, WI
I had briefly listened to KDND in Sacramento and had discovered WKSE in Buffalo in January of 2012, but this was the first Entercom CHR I listened to regularly. Lots of people were complaining on the CHR board of Radio Discussions that a lot of stations seemed to play the same music, and there wasn’t much rock to be found. While never rock leaning, this station did get several mentions for being one of the more unique large market stations. So, one October evening in 2012, I decided to give it a listen, and found something I liked. Like KOYY then WDAY-FM which I discovered about a month later, I also found this station’s audio processing pleasant. Now though, I’m bored.
Presentationally, this station was never much to write home about, but they had more personality back then. Now, they’ve moved to what seems to be what Entercom likes, which is DJs not talking much. So, I think it’s going, which seems to be happening a lot more as I get further into this project.
91.3 KMHS Koos Bay, OR
About a year after I myself graduated from high school, I started taking an interest in high school radio. My school didn’t have a station, but there are three in Seattle, though I’m not a huge fan of the big one that covers 80% or more of the market. The other two are class D stations that only cover a small area. At the time, KMIH had a translator that covered Seattle, but it was a DX signal by the time you got up to where I lived, and it was a very automated station at the time, which sharply contrasts to what it is now. I knew of a couple high school stations outside my market, and sampled them occasionally. KMHS became a regular listen after I discovered it just browsing TuneIn one day. All the querkes it had back then are still here today, but I’m not sure I’m going to keep it now. Back then, it used the imaging about the same frequency it does now, every other song. Noteably missing at the top of the last hour was the weather report, but the afternoon weather director did come on in an imaging spot and introduce herself. Back then, the station was fairly mainstream CHR, though with a decidedly adult lean. Then, suddenly, out of nowhere, a couple times an hour, you’d hear a very out of place hip-hop track. Back then, those were usually the tracks I hadn’t heard before, now it’s really hard to pin down what I’m going to hear that I haven’t before. It seems they’ve embraced a lot of teen pop that many mainstream CHRs won’t play. That’s kind of what I expected when I turned on KKKJ, but as you saw above, they’ve gone in a completely different direction. The only reason I would consider keeping this station is because it’s a high school station, and high school stations by their nature are querkey.
Hot 104.7 WHTP Portland, ME
This is a station I’ve known about since it launched in 2012. Back then, the format was rhythmic-leaning CHR, having completely made the shift to rhythmic just a few months later. I think my opinion of this station today says more about my opinion of the Rhythmic CHR format than it does about WHTP itself. I’m noticing lots of hip-hop here today, most of it current. There are still a few crossover tracks here, but not many. Most Rhythmic CHR stations these days are either Urban-leaning as this is, or gold-based as is the case with KUBE in Seattle. Back in 2012, you saw a lot more Rhythmic CHRs that could have passed as mainstream. The few that possibly could today power hip-hop tracks that I find annoying anyway, so probably wouldn’t be keepers anyway. This may be a station I keep on the mental list for when music eventually shifts again. Then again, now that I’m 27 instead of 18, by the time music changes again I might be completely uninterested.
Magic 104.1 KMGL Oklahoma City, OK
This is another one I discovered on Radio Discussions, when I used to frequent the AC board. Another person there who happened to be about my age, liked this station, and so I decided to sample it. Back then, and still somewhat today, I was looking for something that would sound similar to the long defunct KLSY at 92.5 in Seattle. KMGL is the closest I’ve found. I finally got around to sampling the station I want to say in March of 2011, and it was a semi-regular listen for a while. After Tyler Media bought the station, I felt it became a little more current based, and while it’s still one of the better AC stations out there, I feel it’s been knocked down a few places in my rankings. When I discovered both stations in 2011, I could see the similarities between it and WSPA, I can’t say the same thing today. That being said, it’s still one of the better stations out there and it disserves a spot in my presets.
Allice 105.9 KALC Denver, CO
I found this station I want to say fairly shortly after I found KOSI, though I didn’t start listening to KOSI regularly until 2010. It was October 2011 when I decided to sample this station, I remember the day as being a day I was really stressed out. At that time, I really didn’t know what the scope of my senior project would be, and I had a lot of other things on my mind as well. In any event, I decided, after having read about this station a few months before, to give it a listen. Although musically I liked it right away, they were jockless at the time. Unfortunately, even with jocks on the air, they still sounded quite automated, which they still do today. Musically, I began to lose interest in the format in 2012, though both KALC and similarly formatted WQSM, which we’ll get to later, remained in my presets. Will they stay? I’m not sure yet.
106.5 The Arch WARH St. Lewis, MO
In April of 2010, I was starting to want something different. For the past couple months, I had been listening almost exclusively to WHOM, which we’ll get to shortly. I had very specific requirements. Many stations were already using flash-based web players at the time, but it was easier to find the underlying streams on certain websites. I wanted a high quality stream I could play in Windows Media Player, because recording from most of the web players caused the recordings to come out with lots of pops and clicks in them, which I didn’t know how to get rid of until later, and sometimes using the method you need to causes intentional silences to get cut out. So, I began browsing US Live Radio, and decided to give WARH a listen. I’m not sure how Liquid Compass streams worked at the time, but the preroll add on the stream linked from US Live Radio was different from the one linked on Wikipedia’s page, and the content was different from the official one linked on the website. We’ll get to those content differences shortly. Musically, I found this a refreshing change from the rock leaning variety hits format I was used to in both Seattle and Portland, though Portland was always a bit more pop leaning. I would go back and forth between this station and WHOM for the next few months. As for the content differences on streams, both streams linked from the sites mentioned above played interesting offbeat news stories and other factoids during commercial breaks. The official one on the website appeared to run everything from the air feed. Either that or it was just PSA filler, I’m not sure which as I never listened. When the other streams were shut down, I quit listening regularly. Coming back today, I notice they’ve switched from Anne Duwig and Simon to another female I don’t know and familiar Variety Hits voice Howard Cogan. Another change that made this station an appealing listen compared to the stations I was familiar with was that this station had a full airstaff. This Sunday afternoon however, they appear to be jockless. Not only that, but they’re in an All ’80s weekend. I’ll have to listen again during the week to see what they’re sounding like then.
Y107 KTXY Jefferson City, MO
This is one of those stations I discovered purely by accident, as I was browsing the Columbia market on Tunein in August 2013. Back then, I found KTXY to be quite flashy, sounding like a large market CHR that just happened to land in a sub-200 market. In January 2014 they too changed voices, but unlike WFLY, I didn’t see their voice change as one that bothered me, at least right away. I think the biggest change that bothered me about them was changing their clock but not adding any additional mic breaks to compensate. So, it sounded at least to me, like you weren’t getting as much DJ chatter as you did before. I wasn’t paying attention to how their clock worked at the time, but if I remember correctly, they cut the number of breaks from 3 to 2, though with 30 minutes nonstop coming from one I’m not sure how that worked. Today, I was entertained by the afternoon DJ, but was disappointed that I only heard the one weather jingle on this once quite jingle-heavy station. I also took note of the lack of a legal ID, though my stream did drop for a few minutes right about the time they would have done one assuming their old clock is still in place.
Kidjam Radio 91.3 WAPS-HD3 Akron, OH
This is definitely the most unique station I have ever set, and it’s still that way today. In late 2013, my former vision teacher asked me to teach braille music to one of her students, who I quickly became good friends with. As a result, I started looking for childrens stations, and came across this one. I don’t even remember what prompted me to look at WAPS originally, but when I discovered they had a childrens station, I had to give it a listen. Musically, they’ve gone through a number of changes since the summer of 2014. Back then, in addition to the relatively current product they still play, they played at least a couple oldies an hour. Eventually, those were cut back to one an hour, before apparently being dropped entirely. I do kind of wish they wouldn’t play so much Kids Bop, but other than that and how automated they are overall, I don’t have much to complain about. As for imaging, they have a few new messages, but it’s largely the same as it’s always been. So, overall this is still definitely a keeper.
B98.5 WSB-FM Atlanta, GA
I set this station after an aircheck was posted to Aircheck Downloads that I really liked. I’d known about the station since something like 2011, but after listening once and not liking it, I didn’t listen again for a few years, though I had read about the changes at the station online. Then this aircheck appeared, from May of 2015. I decided to set it, which may not have been the best idea, as I’ve never been able to get into the station outside of that aircheck. It’s funny how that works, sometimes a particular aircheck will sound good when the station overall will be just okay. I’ll have to listen on Saturday nights though, as last time I did, they carried Retro Pop Reunion, which used to be one of my favorite programs. I used to listen via WQSM which we’ll get to later, but when Cumulus absorbed Citadel, that show was dropped. I didn’t pick it up again because WQSM carried it on Sunday nights when there really isn’t much else compelling on the radio, while the other two stations I know that carry the program or at least used to, did so on Saturday nights, when there’s much more content I’m interested in. Outside of checking for RPR which I can also get via KRAV in Tulsa, there’s nothing
interesting here, so it’s going.
103.7 Rock WDAQ-HD2 Danbury, CT
Although my personal music library contains a significant amount of alternative material, I’ve never been able to get into the alt format on radio. I thought this station, launched in 2015 and discovered by me shortly after, would change that. When this first launched, it reminded me of our own Click 98.9 KLCK when it first launched, without the pop crossovers. The more alternative stations I hear though, the less I like the format as a whole. I feel like the Alternative format is splitting into two, the harder rock stations such as the former KFOO in Seattle, and the more pop stations such as this. Most of the alt I have is on the pop side, and so those are the stations I’ll gravitate towards when looking for an Alternative station. Of the pop-leaning stations, this is actually one of the harder ones, still playing a good dose of Foo Fighters and Offspring, but I haven’t really heard any Tame Impala or Billy Eilish or the like in my listen today. That being said, it may stay in my presets as an occasional listen.
Warm 101.3 WRMM Rochester, NY
I have a friend in upstate New York who I’m pretty sure is reading this, and when we first started talking, her common complaint was how current much of the AC format had become. She would always talk about this little station in Rochester called Warm 101.3. So, one night in 2015 as I was coming home from school, I pulled the thing up on TuneIn. I fell in love with it right away. She was right, this was a breath of fresh air when it came to AC radio. Lots of the songs here were ones that used to be staples of AC radio, but had long since disappeared from the format. Remember, this was before the recent wave of Soft AC stations appeared, and some of the songs that I heard here originally have appeared on those stations. For some reason, this station never became a regular listen, but it was there and I’d listen occasionally. I think it had to do with the fact that the stream was a bit hard to find. Wikipedia’s listen link used to go to a dead Radio Loyalty page, but it was updated sometime between when I last tried and today. The stream was not easily found by a screen reader on the station’s website either, but with Wikipedia having the correct link now, the stream is much easier to find. I’m listening today though, and I’m not hearing the same station I did almost six years ago. The station is still billing itself as Today’s Soft Rock, a slogan most other ACs abandoned long ago, but I’m hearing very little soft music here. Even if this station had been the same way it is today in 2015, it would have been one of the softer ACs out there. Outside of the super-soft ACs that have launched recently, this is still one of the softer ones, but I’m hearing very little that surprises me, which is in sharp contrast to how the station worked in 2015. It also seems the imaging has become very quick, something they didn’t used to do. Interestingly, they’re still using the same voices they did as far back as 2004, something you don’t see that often. In fact, the only other station I can think of that has done something similar is our own KKCW, which has had the same voice since at least 2006. He was paired with another voice, but they’ve dropped her. Will I keep WRMM? I’m not sure. I need to listen a little more, which is actually what I said when I decided to set it in the first place.
100.7 WHUD Peakskill, NY
This is another station I discovered completely by accident. My favorite Global Tuners receiver used to be Eugene, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t experiment with others, particularly of the same model. I used the Hudson Valley radio only once, but when the operator of that radio moved to Philadelphia, I started using his radios more, largely to hear the at the time not streaming WBEB. I should do a review of that station sometime. Even though 100.7 is an Atlantic City Classic Rocker there, WHUD was still listed in that receiver’s bandguides. So, I looked it up, then pulled them up from one of the New York City receivers. To me, it reminds me of one of those full service ACs usually found in smaller markets. This one, like Olympia’s KXXO, doesn’t do much in the way of news as some stations do, but to me at least, it has a small market feel, even with some major market elements. That probably has to do with the fact that it’s located in the suburbs of New York City. I don’t think I’m in the right mood for it today, but it’s still largely the same station it was back then, though with a new voice. That means I’m likely to keep it.
Hot 104.7 KKLS Sioux Falls, SD
Formerly owned by Cumulus Media, I found this station in 2010 when I was trying to find any Cumulus CHR I could find. That being said, I didn’t actually sample it until September 2012. Ironically, the first time I heard it I didn’t think it was that great of a station. For some reason though, I decided to listen again, and that was when I heard Sale by Awolnation, a song that when it was on CHR, I thought symbolized a pretty edgey station. That told me that this wasn’t anything similar to Seattle’s KBKS, the station this one reminded me of at first. Interestingly, it doesn’t sound anything like a Cumulus station, I’d love to hear any airchecks of the station from those days to hear what it sounded like back then. Today, it’s pretty much the same station it was when I first heard it, about two months after Townsquare bought it.
Mix 108 KBMX Duluth, MN
I discovered this station completely by accident in the early fall of 2012. Until recently, you could enter
player.streamtheworld.com/liveplayer.php?callsign=KBMXFM into your browser, replacing KBMXFM with just about anything else, and if it was an STW stream, it would come up. Unfortunately, their new product, player.listenlive.co, doesn’t allow this. So, I was just trying random call sign combinations to see what worked, and landed here. At first, I was bored by this station, but for some reason, I kept coming back to it. It’s quite rare that I set a station after its first listen, usually it becomes a regular listen before I add it to any apps, and that’s what happened here for an unknown reason. It remained a regular listen off and on for about two and a half years, but like all these stations, I moved on, though I did come back to this station a couple years ago, and was just as bored as I had been in my first listen. I think part of that was the elimination of long-time voice Shawn Caldwell. Since 2018 when I listened last, they’ve changed voices again, but still the overall presentation is the same. I think it’s finally time to let this one go once and for all.
Z107.3 WBZN Bangore, ME
I’ve always felt a sense of place when listening to this station, though less so lately. I discovered this station while exploring Cumulus CHRs in the summer of 2010. Initially, I kind of brushed it off, but then one day in November I heard it again and it became a regular listen. I felt it was a very community-oriented station, despite having fallen into the hands of one of the biggest companies in the business. Perhaps the original owner still being involved with the station had a lot to do with that. Today, they have a new voice and new jingles for the second time since they were sold in 2012, but are largely sounding as I would expect musically. I think this is a station I’ll have to give a listen to for about a week in various dayparts to decide whether or not I will keep it around. I used to really like hearing Chuck Foster in the afternoon, but I’m listening during the day today. Foster by the way, was the original owner.
Mix 95.7 WLHT Grand Rapids, MI
Formerly known as Channel 95.7, this station rebranded as Mix 95.7 a few years ago with very little changing about its presentation. I’m not really sure what attracted me to this station either, but it’s definitely better than KBMX as far as presentation. When I first discovered this station, it seemed to me that they were quite heavy on 90s music, but that perception quickly faded. I’m not sure why I continued to listen, but I did. Saturday nights were a different story though, as they ran the “You Mix It throwback party.” I used to love that program despite it being jockless, as there came out a bunch of songs I hadn’t heard on the radio in quite some time. As for how I discovered this thing? I don’t remember exactly. My memory is that I was looking at stations Townsquare Media owned, I can’t remember the source I was using. It was December 2011, and I think it was the article about then comedy WNWZ that listed sister WLHT outdatedly as an AC station. So, thinking they would be playing Christmas music, I pulled them up. By December of 2012, sister Soft AC WTRV was in my Christmas music rotation along with Cincinatti’s WRRM, the above mentioned KOSI in Denver, and a handful of other stations. By December 2013, WTRV was my favorite Christmas station. From about a month before to several months after I graduated high school, WLHT was a regular listen along with several other CHRs, and the above mentioned program on Saturday nights was appointment listening until I got into Open House Party a year or so later. As I said at the top, this station is largely the same as it was, but I feel like the new imaging is a lot quicker than what it used to be. Is this a keeper? I’m not sure, I need to listen again.
107.5 Zoo FM KENR Missoula, MT
This is another station that I need to listen to a little more, particularly in the afternoon, before I for sure decide what to do with it, but I’m leaning towards deleting it. First, the discovery story and current observations. I discovered this station in about March of 2011, shortly after I discovered KHKS in Dallas, which we’ll get to later. It was that station that got me hooked on the
rhythmic-leaning CHR thing. I actually had read about this station some months earlier, as I started looking at Montana radio stations. I think it was after receiving KOFI Cowlespell, and wanting to see how big of a market that was. At the time, the station was Rhythmic CHR having evolved from Rhythmic AC, but had moved to rhythmic-leaning mainstream by the time I heard it. Again as I said, it was when I was into anything rhythmic-leaning. I came back to it a few years later as a regular listen, and realized just how different KHKS was from this thing, but it was still a regular listen for a while, especially their noon feature, the 90s at noon. I’m noticing that’s gone today, and I know that my favorite afternoon host, who billed himself as the tallest DJ in America, is also gone from the station. I can’t remember where he’s at now, I want to say Denver. He gave the station a very community feel, which I’m not sure still exists today. I’ll have to listen in afternoons now, but I don’t see much of a reason to keep it from what I’m hearing this midday.
107.3 KFFM Yakima, WA
I think this station has been in my presets more for nostalgic purposes than for actual programming expertees. Even in Townsquare’s portfolio, this station has always seemed like an also ran.
Formaticly, it’s always kind of been an average station, but certainly its audio processing has always needed work. The station first started out with an extremely quiet stream, which for Townsquare was actually quite common in 2010. Then the streams got louder, but KFFM took a long time to follow. By then, the audio was so compressed that it was hard to listen to, except when they went to commercials. When I heard them about a year ago, they had significantly backed off the compression, but now they’re having serious volume issues, with commercials and certain songs being significantly louder than most of the stream, something I thought had been fixed on most streams long ago. Content wise, they’re pretty much the same station they’ve always been, except they have jingles now. A couple things I’ve noticed, first they have jocks on this Saturday. Risha on the Radio, who I used to enjoy at night, was in just a bit ago. She’s been at KFFM for years, but has bounced around from shift to shift. She was at night until Townsquare mandated Billy Bush, then moved to mornings until I can only speculate that the rest of the morning show left and they brought in Brooke and Jubel. I also noticed that on both KENR and KFFM the last couple songs of the hour have no imaging between them. I almost forgot the discovery story on this one, a long complicated one that stretches over about two years, the backstory stretching back an additional four, five, or eight depending on where you start counting. In kindergarten, I became good friends with another student in the VI program at my school, who at the time was a year ahead of me. She ended up being held back, and we’d talk a lot at recess. Actually the story starts with the regular substitute VI teacher at the time, who apparently was the one that told her about Lincoln, Nebraska-based Christian Record Services for the Blind, and their National Camps for the Blind. One of their longtime locations has been Sunset Lake, not far from Seattle. Actually, if anyone reading this has been to the Moich Lake area of Mount Rainier National Park, you’ve driven right by the turnoff. She went in the summer of 2002, and couldn’t stop talking about it all that school year. I went the next four summers, and have been back every summer since 2017, with the obvious exception of last summer. Back then, Christian Record allowed campers to attend more than one camp, and my friend started going to one in Idaho as well. Blind camp wasn’t offered at Sunset Lake in 2007, so I went to that one as well, with another friend who I don’t remember meeting but his parents claimed we had met before Sunset Lake. In any event, we had been in the same cabin there, and he also went to Idaho with me that summer. As they live in Black Diamond, we met and carpooled over. When we lost Seattle radio, we landed on 103.1 in Ellensburg, now a K-Love outlet. When we lost that station, we couldn’t decide on a station for a while, until we landed on 102.1 KPQ-FM. In the time it took to find the station though, we landed on a rap station at 107.3. Two years later, I found myself on an orchestra field trip passing through that area again and found the station, now being much more familiar with the music. It took me several months to find the station online, but I eventually found it as KFFM. Several years later, it got a place in my phone’s favorites, but I’m not sure it will stay there. I’m interested to know if they still carry Seacrest in mid-days, as a lot of stations seem to be dropping that program. Last I heard, they were, but that was about a year ago.
94.9 WHOM Portland, ME
This station has undergone some of the most dramatic changes since I found it on Super Bowl Sunday in 2010. As I mentioned when discussing WARH, my old computer would not handle recordings made from a stream using a flash-based web player well, so I wanted a stream that I could play in Windows Media Player that was high quality. WHOM fit the bill, and I recorded them quite a bit, though not nearly as much as the now defunct WRQX. They were a regular listen for a couple months until I discovered the already reviewed WARH. At that time, the station was owned by Citadel, and came under Cumulus ownership in 2011. Although I had largely moved on long before that happened, I did come back occasionally, and still found it a good station. I even listened to them at Christmas time 2012, and still found the station quite good, though they had changed the weather jingle by then. By the time Townsquare bought the station in July 2013, they had adjusted the branding by dropping the W and simply referring to themselves as 94.9 HOM. I still think they’re one of the better ACs, but they’re not where they were in 2010-11. I think I need another listen, as I had thought they had gone downhill in 2014-15, but then seem to have recovered.
B100 KBEA Quad Cities, IA/IL
This is another Cumulus turned Townsquare station I discovered in 2010, although back then, I didn’t listen regularly. It was when Townsquare bought the station when I started listening regularly, as the weekend after they bought it, I turned them on via Radio Pup and liked what I heard. It helped that they were using Reel World One at the time, which as I’ve mentioned before is my favorite jingle package. In the fall of 2014, they changed their voice, and soon after dropped that jingle package. That, plus the fact they seemed to be slightly shifting musically caused me to not like them as much by the time I gave them another listen in the summer of 2015. They haven’t improved since then, so I think they’re going. One more observation, and that is that they’re on their third set of voices since Townsquare took over.
107.9 Lite FM KXLT Boise, ID
Boise is one of the few markets I’ve been to that I haven’t heard any of the radio over the air. That’s because we didn’t turn the radio on at all on our big road trip in 2003, and I haven’t been back to the market since. I do have an uncle in the market, so there’s a reason to get out that way if we ever decide to do so. I don’t remember what prompted me to look up Boise radio several years later, but I was bored one day in something like 2010, and decided to look things up. I think I pulled up 93.1 then KZMG on Wikipedia first, then picked a random station, KXLT happened to be it. I wouldn’t sample the station for a few more months, but liked it when I did. Then the station was owned by Peak Broadcasting, and for some reason didn’t set it until Townsquare bought it. I’m a bit unsure if I’m going to keep the station or not now, as I’m not sure it’s satisfying anymore, not that it was a regular listen before anyway. For the last hour, they’ve been in a time warp lunch, and some of the imaging there is pretty funny. A friend in the market mentioned they have a time warp weekend, I’ll have to listen during that to see whether some of that imaging exists there too. So, it seems like I need at least two more listens of this station to really decide, one during the week outside of the lunch hour, and one on a weekend.
Hot107.9 WWHT Syracuse, NY
Interestingly, the friend I have in the Syracuse market had nothing to do with me finding Hot 107.9. The story of my discovery of this station actually starts in the spring of 2013, when I heard about a website called Global Tuners, where you can remotely control radios others have set up in various parts of the country. I ran one from my old computer before I moved. Actually, I shut it down during an unexpected winter thunderstorm, and never put it back up. I still have the dongle in my desk if I wanted to put it back up. There was a radio in New York City that was on briefly that spring but then disappeared for a few months. When it came back on that fall, I tuned in and began DXing. I came across an AC station at 107.9 which turned out to be Bridgeport’s WEBE. In trying to figure out what this station was though, I came across WWHT, and eventually gave them a listen. Musically, they were quite good, even though their presentation was quite boring. Despite this, I listened somewhat regularly. Today though, they’re running the same boring presentation, but musicly they’ve changed significantly. My friend actually says they’re running the same music log as Seattle’s KBKS, a station I’ve been bored with in various phases since 2012, with the exception of a six month or so run in 2015. I’m noticing two things in this listen, the absence of the Reel World jingles, and the new voice, one of iHeart’s voices, whose name escapes me at the moment but Scott Fybush has interviewed him before. I think this is going.
98.1 WKDD Akron, OH
Presentationally, this station has always been a bit on the boring side, and has held up largely on its music alone, not unlike WWHT. Like WWHT, I don’t hear anything compelling on this station today. Having always blurred the line between Hot AC and CHR, this station had a pretty good music mix when I discovered them in the spring of 2014. Actually I was sick one evening in May of 2013, and didn’t want to go to bed right away, so I began mindlessly listening to airchecks on Aircheck Downloads. It would be a year or so later that I would actually sample WKDD, and eventually set it. Now though, I don’t hear anything here that makes the station worth keeping.
103.1 KCDA Spokane, WA
To be completely honest, I’m not sure why this is where it is in my iHeart favorites, because I thought this was one of the first stations I set yet it’s just below WKDD, which I didn’t set until 2014. In any event, I discovered this station on the previously mentioned trip to summer camp in 2007, but completely forgot about it for several years. We didn’t listen to it much because I thought it wasn’t coming in that well, not sure what exactly I was hearing. I thought that happened again when I was in the market several years later around the same place, so I’ll have to listen more carefully next time I get to that area. I came back to it after looking at a list of radio stations owned by Clear Channel in 2011, and decided to sample it. Back then, it reminded me of our own Click 98.9, a Modern AC. The station was what I thought was a typical Clear Channel Hot AC at the time, automated with backsells at the end of every song. They continued this way through my stay in the market in the summer of 2012, and I think into 2013. By that summer though, they had backed off the modern lean and added an airstaff, probably in conjunction with the demize of poorly executed CHR Hits 96.1 turned Power 96.1, as Seacrest and Elvis Duran were moved over when that station went back to Country. It wasn’t until a year or two later though that I thought the station went downhill, when they replaced Elvis Duran with the then Brooke and Jubel show, and changed the music to more of the standard template. It’s actually sounding better today than it has the last couple times I’ve heard it, but I’m not sure if it will stay in my favorites. Certainly, there have been dramatic changes to the station I listened to nonstop in the spring of 2012.
Kiss 98.1 KISC Spokane, WA
The next three stations are stations that for some reason aren’t in my favorites on iHeart Radio, but I thought they were so they’re being included here. I discovered KISC on the same trip to camp that has been mentioned here twice before already, including on just the last station profiled. This one was discovered on the way back home at the end of the week. In a normal year, dropoff at camp is Sunday afternoon, and pickup is the following Sunday morning. Since Silverwood Theme Park is only about 20 minutes from camp, we decided to spend the day there and head back west on Monday. It was on the trip back that we discovered KISC, as we flipped back and forth between that and 104.9 KEEH, which at the time was running what appeared to be a regional CCM network as Positive Life Radio. That was the station I had been hearing when I got to hear stations over the past week, which was a lot considering how much radio I’ve gotten to hear at camp over the last few years. Like KCDA, I had forgotten about it though until I had been listening to KCDA for several months already. By this time, I had given up on Clear Channel AC stations, after finding several I couldn’t get into, including KKCW in Portland, which while it was always my go to when in the market, I couldn’t get into it from home. Nevertheless, I decided to give KISC a listen anyway and liked it. I would continue to listen until the late JJ Hemingway was let go at the start of 2012. Hemingway was always an entertaining listen, and the station hasn’t been the same since he and most of the other local talent was let go from the station. Like KKCW, KISC will probably remain my go to especially in mornings when in the market, but I can’t get into them the rest of the day anymore, at least from this distance.
B98 KRBB Wichita, KS
Another station I’m including here because I thought it was in my presets long ago but I can’t find, this one has a bit of an odd discovery story. I can’t even remember when or how I found this, but I came across a demo of a talking HD Radio on ACB Radio’s Main Menu program. I want to say this was in the summer of 2011. I can’t remember whether I ever listened to this station on Clear Channel’s old player or whether I discovered it after the switch to the current setup which took place in September 2011. I know it was a fairly regular listen in the first part of 2012, before the stress of my senior project really set in and I defaulted to KCDA. I think the demo I heard was in something like August 2011 and what I heard there interested me in the station. As you’ve probably gathered by now, the presenter lived in the Wichita market. Back then, this station seemed to do everything wrong, but it still worked. They were running a locally staffed at least part of the time version of iHeart’s Premium Choice format with fairly boring imaging, but it worked, especially for background music. I’m really not sure how, but that has
disappeared in the listen today. KISC and KRBB now use the same voice, and both have eliminated Reel World 1 jingles. KISC has gone to the package that seems to be the thing on AC now, while I haven’t heard a jingle on KRBB. Musically, the station is just kind of average, it wouldn’t surprise me if KRBB and KISC run the same log these days.
106.1 Kiss FM KHKS Dallas, TX
There will never be another station that had the impact KHKS did on me in 2011, but I think that’s largely a product of the stage of life I am at now Vs. where I was in 2011. I was still a teenager then, that being the year I turned 18. I’m 27 now. This station was one I reserved for only the best moods until the summer of 2012 when I listened to many other CHRs. I’m not entirely sure what prompted me to sample it originally, but I had seen it noted in several places prior to the first listen in the spring of 2011. One of the criticisms I had of this station back then still exists today, and that is how tight their rotations are. It appears they have six powers, as I’ve heard all those songs twice in the just under two hours I’ve been listening today. Why repeat so often if there are six songs to choose from? Usually with CHR, I could get through an average session on the computer only hearing one song twice if that, but not KHKS. Many times in those early listens they repeated things before I was done with my computer time, though by the end of my semi-regular listens they had backed off a bit. They’re back to that today, and that’s only one of the factors contributing to my uncertainty about keeping this station in my favorites. It’s certainly going to be re-added to iHeart Radio until I decide further.
98.9 Magic FM Colorado Springs, CO
I had heard about this station as far back as 2011, and even pulled it up briefly on my phone once in early 2012, but didn’t sample it regularly until the spring of 2013. Actually, I think I first heard of this under Citadel ownership, but the reason to sample it came from a lengthy discussion about Cumulus CHRs on Radio Discussions. KKMG has never fit the extremely conservative Cumulus template. In fact, back in 2013, it was extremely rhythmic-leaning. By the time I sampled them a couple years ago, they had gotten rid of longtime voice Brian Lee and replaced him with a deep-voiced guy who to me seems like he’d fit Urban Oldies better. At the same time, the space between Rhythmic and mainstream CHR was widening, and KKMG is and went in the mainstream direction. While still one of the better Cumulus CHRs, I’m on the fence about keeping this one. To me, it doesn’t have the energy at all it did back in 2013 when I was listening somewhat regularly.
XL106.7 WXXL Orlando, FL
This is another one of those stations I had been reading about in columns for months before I sampled it. I finally decided to sample it in the spring of 2012, on a day where I was kind of tired. The fact that I found myself in a pretty good mood after listening got me hooked, but in subsequent listens including today, I really don’t feel anything when listening. Because of this, I don’t think I’ll keep it in favorites. That being said, it’s still one of iHeart’s more unique stations, despite running what sounds to me like iHeart’s national music format. The imaging doesn’t sound like anything I’ve heard on any iHeart station. They definitely are one of the more unique stations in terms of imaging, but I tend to put more weight on music, and musically I’ve found it kind of boring for many years now.
Q98 WQSM Fayetteville, NC
We’re finally to this station, as I referenced it way back when I sampled KALC. I’m doing this one station per day, so that would have been a couple months ago. Today, it’s finally time to review it. I discovered this station in the summer of 2011, as I was still somewhat interested in Cumulus stations. As I’ve said, they had an extremely easy to use streaming platform back then. For about a year, this was a regular weekend listen, even though it was jockless. I think I listened to it too much though, so eventually lost interest. One of the bigger blows was the dropping of Retro Pop Reunion, which I loved to listen to on Sunday nights. I’m listening in early afternoon today, a daypart that for some reason I didn’t like back then. I can’t decide whether I’m going to keep this station or not now, as I don’t find it quite as enjoyable as in previous listens. Part of it has to do with the new jingle package, having dropped Reel World 1 for something else a few years ago. I think maybe I’ll keep KALC but drop this one, as musically I enjoyed KALC much more in my recent listen.
B95.1 KBBY Ventura, CA
Actually I’m not sure if I should put this in next week’s new formats post or here, as this station has actually made a format shift since I last heard it. Apparently, in 2015, the station shifted from Hot AC to AC, though nobody in the trades seemed to be aware of it. I discovered this station around September 2010, when I was interested in Cumulus Hot ACs. The first Hot AC I discovered from Cumulus was Eugene’s KEHK Star 102.3. Back then, they were using Pat Garret as their station voice, as was the other Cumulus Hot AC station I knew of, Harrisburg’s WNNK. Side note, WQSM also uses him. KBBY however was using Shawn Caldwell, likely because Garret is already taken in the market by Rhythmic CHR KCAQ. KEHK dropped Garret years ago, and I wasn’t impressed enough with WNNK when I heard them in 2010 to check back in with them, so haven’t listened since then. That’s the discovery story, but that’s not how it got set. One night in 2011, I was doing some homework and wanted to listen to John Tesh, which was a semi-regular night listen for me back then. I initially wanted to listen via KEHK, but they had moved the show to middays with Billy Bush at nights. KPLZ, our local Hot AC station carried the show, but they seemed to always skip the first story of every hour, so I wouldn’t listen there if I could help it. I must have been in a good mood this night, as I found myself incredibly happy by the end of that night. For the next year or so, it was a semi-regular listen, along with KISC in Spokane. I’m not sure why KBBY hit right that night, but for at least a little while, it worked then, but not really during the day at all. Despite this, I still set it. Today, they’re not a bad AC, but I don’t think I’ll keep them around either.
Leave a Reply