Is 95-3 KHYI Considered a Dallas Station?

The KHYI tower is only 46.3 miles from the Dallas City Limits, and can be heard in the car with little to no static.

On the Northside of the DFW Metro area, KHYI comes in extremely clear, and booms in like a local in suburbs like Lewisville, Plano, McKinney, Denton and Frisco.

Listeners driving through Flower Mound, Carrolton, Richardson, Grapevine, Irving, Garland, or Royse City can listen in the car with absolutely no static.

Is it considered amongst the cluster of DFW stations?

Do companies located in Dallas advertise on KHYI?

Would the Texas Rangers' brass be upset if KHYI became an affiliate of the Houston Astros Radio Network?

I would say KHYI is a Dallas/Fort Worth market station. Dallas/Fort Worth is much bigger than it once was. When I was growing up there, Plano still had a couple of miles of countryside between it and Richardson. McKinney was a farm town that didn't identify as part of the metro. Thus stations that were around then became DFW stations when DFW expanded to those points. A good example of this is KDNT FM, an automated FM attached to the AM in Denton is now the station we know as KISS FM. As I recall they were a 100,000 watt FM then but were a Denton station. With all the move ins I might be confused but I'm thinking KHYI occupies a frequency that once was the local McKinney station.

KHYI has a niche format that isn't going to place the station in a position of needing ratings to make it. They're not going to be on ad agency buy sheets and not going to try to be a major player. They're not a full market coverage station. I suspect they target advertisers on their side of town, the mom and pop businesses. In other words,they might be heard over a percentage of DFW proper but the station makes it's money off the northern suburbs and seems to do okay with that. I doubt the Rangers would be very attractive to them and I doubt the Texas Rangers would be wanting them to be the local affiliate.

And KHYI's billing would be far less than a full market coverage station with the ratings to get the agency buys. They occupy that middle ground between the small town small market station and those of the major market...sort of small market radio with a bit more thought given formatics than say, the station in Bonham, for example. If I had to make a guess on billing, probably not in excess of $1 million a year, maybe less. That's just a wild guess.

If you ask Ken, KHYI is a Dallas signal. If you ask the actual license, well it was originally a Sherman class A that moved and upgraded a little bit. Realistically it covers about the same area as KLAK with Collin, Grayson, Denton counties getting the focus. Except KHYI actually tries to pretend to be a Dallas station, as does their sister KXEZ which is nearly non-existent in Dallas. KHYI is a bit better than KXEZ but still misses the mark for actually hitting Dallas or Ft. Worth with even a 50 dbu. It is however better than KLAK in DFW area covered.

The real killer for KHYI is their horrible audio quality, the station simply sounds awful. Really awful.

Checking the frequency at the DFW Radio History Archives it seems KHYI 95.3 licensed to Howe had been KSSA in 1988, licensed to McKinney as a Spanish language station. In 1985, KWPL an Adult Contemporary station in McKinney and prior to that KMMK in McKinney, called an AC station it was more of a top 40 in the middle 1970s. Prior to that it had been country and easy listening as a McKinney station as KAWB.

I got that info here: http://www.dfwretroplex.com/fmlist.html This site is compiled by Mike Shannon and a fascinating read on DFW stations. While there might be a minor error here or there it seems amazingly accurate and detailed.

b-turner said:

Checking the frequency at the DFW Radio History Archives it seems KHYI 95.3 licensed to Howe had been KSSA in 1988, licensed to McKinney as a Spanish language station. In 1985, KWPL an Adult Contemporary station in McKinney and prior to that KMMK in McKinney, called an AC station it was more of a top 40 in the middle 1970s. Prior to that it had been country and easy listening as a McKinney station as KAWB..

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The history at dfwretroplex.com for 95.3 is rather muddled. I remember the old KMMK, and later KWPL on 95.3. However that station later moved to 106.9 and eventually became a simulcast with a Terrell station on 107.1. The current KHYI was a completely new station. Both the 106.9 and 107.1 signals were later moved away from DFW in order to make way for the establishment of the more powerful 107.1 licensed to Benbrook (outside of Fort Worth) which has had a succession of formats and calls over the past 30 years.

The KHYI signal does well in the northern Dallas suburbs, but starts to die once you drive south of LBJ Freeway. On visits to DFW in recent years I have also noticed the poor audio quality, which is a shame because it used to be quite good.

KHYI sibling KXEZ has a much more limited signal. I remember it launched back in the 90's with a Big Band format, which actually sounded quite good as far as audio quality. The signal was somewhat fringe in Richardson and disappeared around the LBJ/Central interchange. All the new DFW LPFMs on 92.1 have further limited KXEZ coverage area.

The Range sounded good a few days ago, but kind of overdriving it's audio if you ask me. But then again maybe they do that to try to pick up more new listeners. At least it sounds better than the 106.5 station in Dallas broadcasting what sounded like Muslim or Hindi stuff.

Mediafrog is correct that KHYI is a completely different station from the ex-McKinney station. Pretty sure KSSA-FM was moved to 106.9 to accommodate 95.3 Howe. I'm thinking that was in the 1990-91 timeframe. However, I never lived where you could easily hear the station. I remember the KXAS broadcasts saying you could hear the news in Spanish on Latin 107 in the mid-90's, though.

You read the entry wrong, Mike goes into detail about what happened to KSSA/KTLR/KHYI.

KSSA, McKinney. Call letters established 8/1/1988. Format: Spanish. ... KTLR moved to 95.3 and switched calls to KHYI, and a new KTLR started broadcasting at 107.1.

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But really even that isn't completely correct, 95.3 in Howe is a completely unrelated facility to KMMK or KTLR except that Ken signed KTLR on. KMMK was deleted to make room for 94.9's full power upgrade.

Okay, I follow all of this and obviously had my history wrong but where did KMMK go? KWBA became KMMK and then became KWPL, all the same station by different calls and owners but was 95.3 in McKinney. If the Howe assignment was unrelated, what happened to the McKinney frequency? How did 95.3 become available to be assigned a different station in a different city of license?

By the way, in the last days of KWBA, they were doing a very strange format. It was mainly album tracks by artists mainly played on the AOR stations of the time, all being mainly acoustic in nature and soft. I recall hearing some CSN&Y, Dan Fogelberg and even Easy Now by Eric Clapton, for example, presented unannounced in the typical Beautiful music style with liners every quarter hour. I'm guessing it was a custom mix created by an employee there after the papers were signed and before the sale was approved by the FCC. It was only about 3 months and there were very, very few commercials by then. I was told by time the new owner took over the station had been stripped bare...no music library except a few reels of top 40 oldies, a reel to reel and a carousel left of the automation system, not even a board or turntable.

b-turner said:

Okay, I follow all of this and obviously had my history wrong but where did KMMK go? KWBA became KMMK and then became KWPL, all the same station by different calls and owners but was 95.3 in McKinney. If the Howe assignment was unrelated, what happened to the McKinney frequency? How did 95.3 become available to be assigned a different station in a different city of license?

By the way, in the last days of KWBA, they were doing a very strange format. It was mainly album tracks by artists mainly played on the AOR stations of the time, all being mainly acoustic in nature and soft. I recall hearing some CSN&Y, Dan Fogelberg and even Easy Now by Eric Clapton, for example, presented unannounced in the typical Beautiful music style with liners every quarter hour. I'm guessing it was a custom mix created by an employee there after the papers were signed and before the sale was approved by the FCC. It was only about 3 months and there were very, very few commercials by then. I was told by time the new owner took over the station had been stripped bare...no music library except a few reels of top 40 oldies, a reel to reel and a carousel left of the automation system, not even a board or turntable.

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The original McKinney facility:
August 1, 1969, signed on as KAWB 95.3
Jan. 2, 1974 calls changed to KMMK
Oct. 21, 1985 calls changed to KWPL
Aug. 1, 1988 calls changed to KSSA-FM (became a simulcast of KSSA/1600)
Jan. 1991 moved from 95.3 to 106.9 (allowing 94.9/Arlington to upgrade from C1 to C, and adding new 95.3 allocation in Howe [see below])
Jan. 1993 calls changed to KRVA-FM (simulcast of KRVF/107.1 Terrell)
Nov. 1997 calls changed to KZDF-FM (simulcast of KZDL/107.1 Terrell)
Aug. 1999 calls changed back to KRVA-FM (simulcast of KRVF/107.1 Terrell)
Jul. 2002 KRVA-FM moved from 106.9 to 107.1, city of license changed from McKinney to Campbell and transmitter moved east out of market to accommodate upgrade of 106.7/Granbury. Concurrently 107.1/Terrell was moved to 106.9/Kerens.


The Howe facility:
Sep. 1991 - Construction permit granted for 95.3 licensed to Howe.
Apr. 17, 1994 signed on as KHYI (classic country as "Y95")
Jan. 1, 1997 flipped to Americana format as "The Range"

Thank you so much for the detailed history.

I recall working at KTER in the first half of 1980 when Terrell FM was pretty new, also with a country format. I believe the calls on the FM were KTLR then. Dick Zimmer had KTER for a couple of years or more before it went back to Bill Pirtle who sold it to the Monkerns. While working at KTER, I met a fellow that was working at KMMK. He got a weekend gig at KLIF when they were trying an AC format.

Tip of the hat to Huff and his very concise history. Matches my recollections (guess the old brain cells are still functioning after all.)

Way to go Huff, that is what I thought had happened but I couldn't find the info I wanted to back it up. It seems the FCC has KRVA's history cards mixed up with a Fulton, MO station, making the KAWB cards currently lost. Of course the cards would've far predated the shuffle.

I believe at the same time KNTU changed COL from Denton to McKinney as the FCC wouldn't have allowed McKinney to lose all its licensed stations.

Not only is 95-3 distorted slightly, there's a staticy hiss in the sound. It sounds like they need new equipment. 89-7 is distorted too, but no hiss.

Hey all, I appreciate all the comments on KHYI both positive and negative. I am the pd of the station and am constantly working to try to improve the sound of the station. I know there's nothing I can do about the signal's reach because of the tower location. In the 7 years I've been with the station, I've changed the way we get the signal to the tower from martis to using a barix and encoding the audio at a higher quality than was being used before I arrived on the job. I know there's a hiss, I've got our engineer looking at that when he has time. And some of it may be equipment...trust me when I say I understand that. I also get frustrated with the sound from especially when I have to deal with ducting too! We're working on it and we are constantly striving to do better. Again, thanks for your feedback!

Nice to see a post on this board from someone who is in radio! I spent 10 years of my life in radio and I think KHYI is one of the better stations in D/FW radio. Even tried to get hired there once. I like the way the station is programed, the sound of the station, the format of the station and particularly, the ownership of the station who are local folks with local interest in mind and graduates of Texas Tech. Keep up the good work! More local radio stations with local interests are definitely big in my book. I was taught stations like KHYI were supposed to be what KHYI is!!

jayweaver said:

Nice to see a post on this board from someone who is in radio! I spent 10 years of my life in radio and I think KHYI is one of the better stations in D/FW radio. Even tried to get hired there once. I like the way the station is programed, the sound of the station, the format of the station and particularly, the ownership of the station who are local folks with local interest in mind and graduates of Texas Tech. Keep up the good work! More local radio stations with local interests are definitely big in my book. I was taught stations like KHYI were supposed to be what KHYI is!!

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Thanks Jay! I also appreciate seeing posts from someone who's been in radio. You mentioned trying to get hired here once, I'm assuming that was before my time, as I have a file with the applicants I've had since coming to the station and I didn't see anything with your name on it. I don't have any ft pos at the current time, but I always like to keep an eye out for pt/vac fillin peeps.

There's a few of us radio folks still on these boards, I'm glad to see you chime in Chuck.
I can say KHYI fills an important role in DFW (and Texoma!) radio and does it well. Despite having a few technical issues here and there KHYI is not a bad station, I had a listen the other day and noticed it didn't sound as bad in the past. I'm wondering if their audio issues are more related to the source audio files themselves.

LibertyNT said:

There's a few of us radio folks still on these boards,
I can say KHYI fills an important role in DFW (and Texoma!) radio and does it well. Despite having a few technical issues here and there KHYI is not a bad station. I'm glad to see Chuck chime in.

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LibertyNT Thanks for that. Doing mornings, PD, MD, and Prod Dir, as well as everything I do with my syndicated show, I can't always chime in, but if anyone wants to get in touch they can pm me or my email is [email protected] (pm will probably get a faster reply I get WAAAAYYYY too many emails and it might get lost)