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Kansas radio is BORING.

C

CalebC

The last thing I remember anything changing here in Southeast Kansas was the creation of "My 94.9" In Independence, KS. The KIND call letters were given to them. 102.9 was given the call letters KBIK and rebranded as "Indy 102.9" And even then that was a couple years ago. Eh, I don't know. Guess I'm looking for things to complain about. :D Nothing else going on in this board!
 
The Kansas board is a little slow to move at times. I'd guess because most of the radio is in two metro areas, Wichita and Topeka. However, there are a lot more signals today than when I worked in the Wichita market back in the 70's.

Back then, the battle in Wichita was between KLEO and KEYN. KFDI AM/FM had a iron clad lock on country, KAKE-AM was a full service A/C, KFH was "there", KICT was "Proud Country", KARD-FM along with KBRA-FM were beautiful music, and half of the current FM stations didn't exist.

Now.. a ton of stations and rim-shots mostly owned by semi-major groups VT'd by talent somewhere else. I visited a few years back and was invited into one of the major clusters. Sadly in the middle of the week during mid-days the only person on-site was the receptionist. Every studio was empty. The whole cluster could have been built into a closet just as easily...

Jay Walker
 
Jay, I loved what you said about KFH being "there". What was their format before they switched to Country? I worked there as a Senior in high school in the early 90's during the "oldies" era.

But yes, Wichita radio was very interesting in the late 70's and through the 80's. The KEYN and KLEO battle became the KEYN and KKRD battle. KZSN came on in '86 and offered a different approach to country compared with KFDI and KFH. I did like KFH as a Country station, they had more of a "city feel" compared to KFDI.

I also liked KBRA, which became KLZS, and their Class FM AC approach. KQAM was a good Oldies station with a few AC cuts blended in in the 1984-85 period. I remmebered when KXLK signed on in 1985 as a Gold Based AC. "Good Vibrations" by the Beach Boys was their first song. And in the late 80's, T-95 and KRZZ duked it out in the AOR war.

Wichita radio had some great battles and times in the 70's and 80's, of course Wichita had its share of awful stations. KAKZ and its "Talkradio" format was horrible, so was KWLK (Lite 106.5), and probably one of the dumbest decisions was dropping the KLEO call letters to go KZSN Classic Country.

I'm kind of rambling, but that's my two cents on Wichita radio in the olden days.
 
jimford1973 said:
Jay, I loved what you said about KFH being "there". What was their format before they switched to Country? I worked there as a Senior in high school in the early 90's during the "oldies" era.


I'm kind of rambling, but that's my two cents on Wichita radio in the olden days.
Click to expand...

Ramble on my friend ;D

I left the market (again for the fourth time) around 1981 for KOFM OKC. During my entire time in Wichita (born there) KFH was the typical old line Full Service MOR. The major ratings grabber for them (IIRC) and it wasn't much, was Kansas sports mostly WSU. Programming was very traditional MOR, CBS news at TOH, CBS features as available, and the typical "standards" MOR playlist of that time, Sinatra, Mathis, instrumentals etc. Personalities were somewhat long winded yet conversational. In general it was tailored for the 55+ Cadillac owner.

Their main in format competition (25-54 female) was KAKE 1240 which in addition to being a semi-hot A/C for the time period focused on a high personality presentation featuring Gene Rump, Bill McClain, Scooter Myers, "Crazy Dan Timbrook the personalities and the tie-in to KAKE TV pretty much left KFH holding the bag with the 54+ audience. It was funny that KAKE AM with it's limited signal, 1000 day/250w nights was able to keep KFH and it's vastly superior signal 5000w Day/Night at bay. KFH by the way had the best signal in Wichita. KFDI was 10,000w Day East/West and 1000w nights beamed North/South down Broadway. KFDI had to protect KNX on the west coast as KNX was the 1A on that frequency. The other stations in general were the typical 5000w/1000w directional facilities with the exception of KFDI and it's 10000 daytime signal. Remember during this time period pre-1974/76 FM with the exception of KEYN was not a significant player...

During the mid to late 70's (IIRC) KFH was floundering looking for a format. They tried country which was doomed to fail because of that monolith on North Broadway KFDI AM. At the time KFDI AM was the undisputed leader in ratings and revenue. Oatman and Lynch KNEW their market and OWNED it lock stock and cracker barrel. KFH did try country aiming for the "outlaw country" audience since that was around the beginnings of the "Outlaw Country" movement (think Willie/Waylon/Jerry Jeff). You can see that reflected in the KFH logos at the time. The cowboy caricature with the oversize cowboy hat and the handle bar mustache. However upper management IMO never embraced the concept as they were the same team that was way more comfortable with the previous MOR format.

That format experiment faded away in part due to the dominance of KFDI and when KBUL AM also country moved frequency from the daytimer at 900 to 1410 (ex-KWBB) and became a full-time service.

After that KFH reverted back to a variation of Hot A/C hoping to make a three way battle with the market contemporary top-40s KLEO 1480 and KEYN at 103.7. Somewhere along that time time ABC Network announced but never launched the syndicated "Super Radio" format which was scheduled to launch on KBRA-FM. However that format never got off the ground. I don't recall the reason, but it pretty well jacked up both KBRA and KFH. After that point I lost track of the goings on and for the remainder of my time in the market I didn't pay much attention to them.

A couple of points to recall, KBRA was the original KFH-FM which was Wichita's first Album Rock station (IIRC around 68 -70/72) in glorious mono known fondly by those who could hear it as "Channel 97". The demise of that format opened the door for KEYN FM to edge their way into the early hybrid Album/Top 40 format years before KICT.

If you want to do the research check out regular poster and radio expert extraordinaire David Eduardo's website www.americanradiohistory.com absolutely the best on-line searchable archive of broadcast history through the pages of many of the industries leading publications from the 1930's through today.

So how's that for "ramble on" :D

Jay Walker
 
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