I miss some of the stuff y'all have listed...most especially, the first few years of 94.5 KDGE, when they played a truly diverse range of alternative music.
But the thing that I really miss in North Texas radio is when it was possible to tune into stations in nearby small markets and hear something that sounded different from what was on Dallas/Fort Worth radio. Things like being able to hear top 40 and pop hits that weren't getting played in Dallas on stations like KNIN-AM/FM Wichita Falls, KDSQ-FM Denison/Sherman, KWPL-FM McKinney/Plano, KPXI-FM Mt. Pleasant, and KIKT-FM Greenville.
I also miss the weird juxtapositions of musical styles and promos on these stations -- the sort of thing that never happened on the "more professional" Dallas stations. Things like hearing a Jimmy Sommerville dance song (a remake of "Mighty Real"), Michael Murphy's "Wildfire", and a promo for a Led Zeppelin interview -- all on the same station, in the same hour, in 1990. That was courtesy of KDSQ. Or hearing a promo announcing the start of "another 30 minutes of stopless hits" -- and then the station went right into a 20 year old Moody Blues song. That was on an all-request lunch hour on KNIN.
Or hearing Paul Mauriat ("Love is Blue") and MC Hammer ("Pray") on the same station within a 15 minute period -- that was on KIKT, back when MC Hammer was still generating the hits. They played AC music in the daytime and Top 40 at night, and that was right around the time of day that they were switching formats for the evening.
These stations were rough around the edges, they did things that you weren't supposed to do on the radio, they had personalities that varied from great to horrendous (or nonexistent at KDSQ, which was automated, but still had some musical quirks)...but they were fun to listen to because you didn't know what you were going to hear next.
Unfortunately, most of these radio stations were moved into Dallas/Fort Worth (and mostly now carry Spanish-language programming), and the few that are left are voice-tracked and have had the life and spontaneity sucked out of them. They are, in short, every bit as bland and predictable as Dallas/Fort Worth radio has become. Since those stations were also once the source of the new personalities that might some day be heard in major markets like Dallas, we can figure that the future will be even worse since that pipeline is now pretty much gone.
