As with the posts from the last two weeks, this post originally appeared on The Radio Crytic on September 1, 2021. Next week will be the review of my favorite stations from 2018, then I’m not sure yet what I’ll do about the rest of the posts from that blog.
As promised a couple weeks ago, this week it’s the stations that for some reason I never added to apps as favorites, but still listened to regularly. Not included here are stations I still listen to regularly or those I’ve been into since the beginning of Covid.
107.7 The Beat KWXS Bend, OR
This is a station I’ve known about since it signed on as a new signal to the market in April of 2012. That June was when I sampled it for the first time, then Rhythmic CHR Wild 107.7. In January 2015, the station hired KEHK program director and afternoon host Maverick for the same position, and relaunched as 107.7 The Beat. I pulled it up one afternoon in early spring of that year and it became a regular listen for the next several months, alternating with a couple other stations which I profiled in previous posts. I wish I knew where Maverick was now, as he was one of my favorite afternoon jocks anywhere, and he’s been missing from the station since 2017 when I pulled it up at work one afternoon and someone else was in who didn’t do anything special for me. Musically, this station is pretty much the same as it was at launch, running jockless except for morning and afternoon drive, and with a playlist that’s fairly dance-leaning.
Hot 97.5 KKCT Bismarck, ND
While I knew about both KKCT and sister KKLS in Sioux Falls which I profiled as part of my original post before I heard them in the early fall of 2012, I hadn’t heard them because I wasn’t all that
interested. When I heard KKLS though and didn’t recognize it as a Cumulus station after its sale, I decided to check out KKCT. I felt like something was missing with KKCT, but it sounded more like a Cumulus station than KKLS did. Still the first quarter of college for me was a stressful one, and I didn’t have a default station at the time. So, this station became my go to for a while. It used to be a fairly laid back, sort of automated sounding station, similar to Champain-Urbana’s WQQB, which would be here if I could find a stream for that station. Today, I don’t see its appeal, as they don’t stand out as being as laid back as they used to. They sound like a fairly typical Townsquare station. One issue I have with this station and the previously reviewed KENR, which is the closest sounding station to this now and actually has been for a while, both stations use Townsquare’s Matt Ryan as their station’s imaging voice as well as their mid-day DJ. If I remember right, I decided to remove KENR from my presets, and I don’t think this station will stay in my mental list either.
Kiss 98.5 WKSE Buffalo, NY
This station has one of the oddest discovery stories. I don’t remember exactly how it used to work, but TuneIn had a sort of scan feature that would take you to stations similar to the one you were listening to. I don’t remember what station I was on, but eventually wound up on KTWN now an Air1 outlet, then hit the scan button again and landed on WKSE. This was in January 2012, but I didn’t give WKSE another listen until July 2013, and the story of that is just as odd. I had been using Global Tuners a lot that summer, but I was using the same radios over and over again because they were the ones I liked. One day, I decided to use the radio from Buffalo, though I knew nothing about the market. The only station I knew about, or that I could remember, was Classic Hits WHTT, so that’s what I put on until they went to commercial break, when an add for Niagara something or other came on. Then I remembered WKSE and flipped over. I don’t quite remember how Canadians CJED then Ed FM or CFLZ then Z101 came into the picture that day, but I listened to them as well. WKSE for some reason or another became a somewhat regular listen over the next year or so. I’m not entirely sure what the attraction was, but they were a regular listen for a few months, then they became relegated to Sunday nights, as they ran Open House Party. If I knew I was going to be on the computer past 9 on Sunday nights, I was quite particular about the station I’d choose, as some stations came out of OHP into Dausen Mcallester, a program I can’t stand. Eventually, I moved on completely from WKSE, and when I moved down here for school and became busy on weekend evenings, Open House Party. To clarify, WKSE wasn’t the only station I’d listen to, I really need to call up SJ Broadcasting and see what happened to the stream for WQQB, as they are another station I’d regularly listen to that like WKSE, I’m not sure what the attraction was. Today, WKSE sounds pretty much the same as it did back then. Since it wasn’t set back then, I’m not sure why it needs to be now.
Hits 96.1 WHQC Charlotte, NC
Unless I can reach SJ Broadcasting today, this will be the last station I profile in this listening project that has so far taken about three months. I discovered this station in 2014, though had heard about it as far back as 2012. When WWPW in Atlanta launched in 2012, it drew a lot of comparisons to WHQC, then having just shifted from Rhythmic CHR The Beat to mainstream as Channel 96.1. Atlanta seems to do everything right, but for some reason or another it never made it into my presets. I would listen occasionally at first launch, but it never actually got to the level of a regular listen. Charlotte however did for a few months in 2014. I actually saw Charlotte as more similar to Portland’s KKRZ, which while a bit automated, sounded pretty good back then, and another station I was listening to a lot at the time, though my purposes for that were largely aircheck related, rather than actual listening. I had largely already moved on from WHQC by August 2014, but the major blow was the replacement of night guy Reed with a regional night show that sounded terrible. The big attraction of this was supposed to be that it was live across the east, but the product was so bad that it didn’t last. I never would have guessed Reed was tracked, as he sounded really good. I think it was in 2019 that WHQC rebranded as Hits 96.1, starting a number of rebrandings of iHeart CHRs across the country. I think the station is still as good as it was back then, despite being another station that has dropped Reel World 1 jingles. It sure seems like that package is going out of style quite quickly, as a number of stations I used to love in part because of that package have dropped it. To be clear, there are also some pretty boring stations that use it, like KSME, which I mentioned that I wanted to listen to in my post a couple weeks ago. If I can’t reach SJ Broadcasting about WQQB, I’d feel pretty good about ending this project here, as I think it’s actually going to end with an additional station set in iHeart Radio, as I think I’m going to set this one. I think even with setting the four stations I listen to most frequently now, the number of stations set in my apps is still down significantly from where it was when I started.
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