Y-95 vs 97.1 The Eagle: Retro CHR

[JRZFM100]

Somehow, quite accidentally, the discussion of Y-95 versus The Eagle got started on another board. So I thought I'd bring it here for comment by the DFW market.

Let me take you back, the era is 1988/89 to about 1992. KEGL was a Sandusky O/O located in the Xerox building in Las Colinas. Just to the East, Scott Ginsberg's Y-95 was in the Texas Commerce Bank building after having been relocated there from South Cooper Street in Arlington.

Classic 1980's CHR in the Metroplex. The Morning Guys, Wendy & Billy Burke on the Wire (Y-95) versus Leigh Ann and Kidd Kaddick (not in the same / competing day parts) on The Eagle.

Buzz versus Joel!

That is the era. Thoughts, comments and a the beginning of trip down DFW memory lane starts right now!

 

[OKCRadioGuy]

What a hell of a top-40 war. Good times in radio for sure!

 

[Jay Walker]

I was the Eagles imaging voice and creative services director during that time (1987-1992). It was one heck of a CHR versus Rock 40 battle and Y was a damn good radio station staffed by some of the best in the business (Buzz Bennett, Charlie Quinn (?) and some really great air talents) plus they had the best equipped studios I'd seen since Chicago..

At the Eagle we had Joel Folger (the PD) and Jimmy Steel (the APD/MD) who were and still are some really creative and talented pros. As for me, I had the most fun I've ever had. I learned a ton about strategies and how to compete with minimal equipment without buckets of money.

Fun times!
Jay Walker

 

[Basketballfan]

As a listener it was nice having Q102, 92.5, 97.1, 97.9 all playing arena rock at the same time. Some overlap it seemed, but not enough where you'd hear the same 30 songs in rotation all the time.

Does the "9th caller wins ____________" still work? Did it work back then? I admit dialing in when the DJ said to dial iin and trying to win concert tickets or the latest CD and never won.

 

[ken barnett]

I was there from 10/90 til 10/91. It was a lot of fun up until the knucklehead GM decided we should be POWER 95.

Working for Randy Kabrich was a pure pleasure, and the air staff and production people were top notch.

Lots of great memories and stories.

 

[Jay Walker]

I was there from 10/90 til 10/91. It was a lot of fun up until the knucklehead GM decided we should be POWER 95.

Working for Randy Kabrich was a pure pleasure, and the air staff and production people were top notch.

Lots of great memories and stories.

Hi Ken
One of the decisions I could never wrap my head around was the format/branding change to Power 95. Was it because Y/Power was concerned about possible erosion with the female demos? Or just a re-imaging/re-launch to create the perception of a "new" radio station?
Jay Walker

 

[ken barnett]

Jay, who knows. I do know this.... The knucklehead GM saw a story in the DMN about the city of Dallas becoming a 51% minority city. He wanted to format the station to target that. (not taking into account the suburbs and Ft.Worth)
He also wanted to get rid of Kabrich, because Kabrich did not report to him.

I'm sure there was more, but as the lowly mid-day guy, that was all I was privy to.

 

[Jay Walker]

Jay, who knows. I do know this.... The knucklehead GM saw a story in the DMN about the city of Dallas becoming a 51% minority city. He wanted to format the station to target that. (not taking into account the suburbs and Ft.Worth)
He also wanted to get rid of Kabrich, because Kabrich did not report to him.

I'm sure there was more, but as the lowly mid-day guy, that was all I was privy to.

Hi Ken,
Thanks for the reply. At the time, it seemed the format/image swap was a dream come true for us at the Eagle.
:
Our plan of attack with any Contemporary competition, was to force them urban. We knew that KKDA and K-104 had a lock on the urban market and anyone foolish enough to play in that playground was destined to be crushed. I reference 100.3 Jamz, Power 95, as well as V-100.

The bummer for all of us, when Y left the format, The Eagle died as well...
I appreciated the insight from the other side of the wall ;D

Jay Walker

 

[MikeShannon914]

Supposedly the "Power" moniker was due to an increase in power. Improving perception of the station could have been a by-product, but they did have trouble keeping morning drive talent. I thought Trey and Bill were good, but Bill headed off to NY to do weather. Along the way were Sonny Fox and even Jack Murphy. Also, KTKS/Kiss-FM was a player in that era (1984-87 at least) until they threw in the towel and started playing chirping birds.

Me, I think a young Kidd/Dave Kraddick held court better than the rest back then. He knew his audience (the 'homework crowd,' whom he was incredibly respectful of and didn't talk down to) and played it to the hilt. While doing afternoons, "Burn Your Buns" was a riot. By the late 80s, Kidd wasn't relevant anymore, and The Eagle really screwed with their playlist...throwing in Garth Brooks and Clint Black songs, just because they had entered the Hot 100. Two years of that disease, and it was lights out on the format.

(BTW, I have to laugh at Kidd's bio today...he's gone from being born in 1954, to 1959, and now he was born in 1964.)

 

[OKCRadioGuy]

I totally agree with you about KEGL and Kidd. Back in the day he certainly was one hell of a talent. The format certainly took a turn for the worse later on when they started throwing in garbage that didn't belong. I stopped listening at that time period and switched to other things like KYMZ out of Tulsa.

 

[OKCRadioGuy]

Honestly, the downhill slide of KEGL was when Moby departed. During the years he was on in the mornings and Kidd was still on at night, KEGL kicked butt.

 

[Huff]

Supposedly the "Power" moniker was due to an increase in power.

The 94.9 frequency had been at a full 100kw since its days as KAMC. KHYI did hold a CP to increase height from 1140 to 1508 feet at the time, but that increase didn’t occur until after the station was KODZ.

Y95 had fallen behind both rock-leaning KEGL and rhythmic-leaning KJMZ by a substantial margin among their target demo in the Winter ’91 book. The “Power” moniker was part of PD Frank Miniaci’s plan to re-image the station upon returning to the market after a stint at KKBT/Los Angeles.

The Eagle really screwed with their playlist...throwing in Garth Brooks and Clint Black songs, just because they had entered the Hot 100. Two years of that disease, and it was lights out on the format.

KEGL only played two country crossovers in 1991-92: The live version of Garth Brooks’ “Friends In Low Places” and “Achy Breaky Heart” by Billy Ray Cyrus. Both were played sparingly (mostly at night) due their phenomenal across-the-board popularity at the time. (The #1 station among 18-34s at the time was KSCS.) Those songs did tend to stick out like a sore thumb, but their presence alone was not enough to derail an entire station.

Top 40 as a format was in perilous straits in 1990-93. There was a marked lack of middle ground hits that could build consensus among a broad spectrum of 18-34s. On side you had the rock-based hits of Guns N’ Roses, the Black Crowes, Extreme, etc, while on the other side was Janet Jackson, Boyz II Men, C&C Music Factory, etc. The format’s identity crisis was exacerbated by the fact younger listeners were flocking to other formats altogether: country was white hot and alternative was skyrocketing after Nirvana burst onto the scene in mid '91. Dozens of famous top 40 stations across the station met their demise during this malaise, and both KHYI and KEGL can be counted among those ranks.

 

[Jay Walker]

Supposedly the "Power" moniker was due to an increase in power.

The 94.9 frequency had been at a full 100kw since its days as KAMC. KHYI did hold a CP to increase height from 1140 to 1508 feet at the time, but that increase didn’t occur until after the station was KODZ.

Y95 had fallen behind both rock-leaning KEGL and rhythmic-leaning KJMZ by a substantial margin among their target demo in the Winter ’91 book. The “Power” moniker was part of PD Frank Miniaci’s plan to re-image the station upon returning to the market after a stint at KKBT/Los Angeles.

The Eagle really screwed with their playlist...throwing in Garth Brooks and Clint Black songs, just because they had entered the Hot 100. Two years of that disease, and it was lights out on the format.

KEGL only played two country crossovers in 1991-92: The live version of Garth Brooks’ “Friends In Low Places” and “Achy Breaky Heart” by Billy Ray Cyrus. Both were played sparingly (mostly at night) due their phenomenal across-the-board popularity at the time. (The #1 station among 18-34s at the time was KSCS.) Those songs did tend to stick out like a sore thumb, but their presence alone was not enough to derail an entire station.

Top 40 as a format was in perilous straits in 1990-93. There was a marked lack of middle ground hits that could build consensus among a broad spectrum of 18-34s. On side you had the rock-based hits of Guns N’ Roses, the Black Crowes, Extreme, etc, while on the other side was Janet Jackson, Boyz II Men, C&C Music Factory, etc. The format’s identity crisis was exacerbated by the fact younger listeners were flocking to other formats altogether: country was white hot and alternative was skyrocketing after Nirvana burst onto the scene in mid '91. Dozens of famous top 40 stations across the station met their demise during this malaise, and both KHYI and KEGL can be counted among those ranks.

The whole Rap/Rock fragmentation of the format at the time worked for a while to KEGL's advantage. This of course was as seen from my vantage point involved with programming at the Eagle.

As production director I was task with "DE-Rapping" singles from artist such as Michael Jackson's "Bad" album. Usually this involved replacing any "spoken" word segment with any instrumental bridge from the single or album. We did this to allow us to play a single without violating our "No Rap" policy. Some of my efforts were released by the record companies as rock radio edits.

The same re-edits happened with Rock artists such as Guns N Roses where I would make a rock radio extended length version by looping any instrumental bridge. We did this to make "Eagle Exclusive" edits.

About the two country cross-over adds: Garth Brooks and Billy Ray Cyrus.
At the time of the adds, as mentioned Country Radio was on fire in Dallas with the debut of "Young Country" with it's high profile Top-40/CHR energetic presentation and of course the legacy stations KSCS and K-PLEX.
Our call out research indicated that these titles needed exposure even on the Eagle which was trying to lean towards a traditional Top-40 format.

I agree you are correct with the "Power" moniker/imaging since I know that during the time Y and Eagle were competing nothing was ever mentioned about a power increase.

When I became involved with 94.9 during the first LMA to happen in Dallas, the transmitter location was the old "Miller" tower on Beltline Road in Cedar Hill. They were running a pair of combined OLD Harris transmitters with Swaggart Ministries Asset Tags... I always hated those transmitters.

The Aux was a 35k Continental located at the old Channel 39 Tower along with 107.5, 105.3, and 100.3 each on separate antennas until the collapse of the structure Oct 13 1996.

Jay Walker

 

[wxman76]

Honestly, the downhill slide of KEGL was when Moby departed. During the years he was on in the mornings and Kidd was still on at night, KEGL kicked butt.

You mean KEGL kicked a$$.

The first time I heard them one night in 1987, I recall the DJ saying liners along the lines of "Here comes 30 minutes of non-stop kick a$$ rock and roll on KEGL."

 

[Basketballfan]

where do bands like POD and Linkin Park and 311 fit in...a little rap, and rock and roll? I liked the mash-ups Jay-Z did with Linkin Park

 

[Jay Walker]

where do bands like POD and Linkin Park and 311 fit in...a little rap, and rock and roll? I liked the mash-ups Jay-Z did with Linkin Park

During the timeline of the Y-95/Eagle format battle that Genre did not exist. Music released at the time had a well defined line of "Hair Bands" on one side and "Crossover Rap" on the other.

The majority of the rock listeners HATED any music with "spoken" lyrics. This was a throwback to the "Disco Sucks" mindset that, in Dallas, seemed to carry over well into the mid to late 80's. As was pointed out in an earlier post Dallas had legacy rock stations, The Zoo and Q-102. Even Alt was breaking out with the launch of 94.5 The Edge in Denton. So Dallas was a Rock and Roll Market.

I "think" the suburban population boom along with the influx of east coast demographics (when JC Penny relocated to Plano, as well as the Telecom boom in Collin County) aided the approval of urban music since a number of folks moving into the area came from east coast markets that had high urban format penetration.

In the last 25+ years the Dallas radio landscape has changed from a definite southern regional programming musical style to the current homogenized metropolitan landscape of today. Some of this was caused by changing population and the exposure of various musical styles from national programmers like MTV.

 

[Jay Walker]

Top 40 as a format was in perilous straits in 1990-93. There was a marked lack of middle ground hits that could build consensus among a broad spectrum of 18-34s. On side you had the rock-based hits of Guns N’ Roses, the Black Crowes, Extreme, etc, while on the other side was Janet Jackson, Boyz II Men, C&C Music Factory, etc. The format’s identity crisis was exacerbated by the fact younger listeners were flocking to other formats altogether: country was white hot and alternative was skyrocketing after Nirvana burst onto the scene in mid '91. Dozens of famous top 40 stations across the station met their demise during this malaise, and both KHYI and KEGL can be counted among those ranks.

Huff has nailed the entire situation in one paragraph.
Excellent post, Thank you

Jay Walker

 

[Kent]

Y95 had fallen behind both rock-leaning KEGL and rhythmic-leaning KJMZ by a substantial margin among their target demo in the Winter ’91 book. The “Power” moniker was part of PD Frank Miniaci’s plan to re-image the station upon returning to the market after a stint at KKBT/Los Angeles.

Y-95 also began its mudslinging campaign targeting KEGL just before that book. That loud clicking sound throughout the Metroplex was everyone turning off Y-95 in response! That was when I turned the station off for good. I'll grant you it's nonscientific and that I had fairly small social network, but I didn't know even one person who kept listening to Y-95 after that started. KEGL responded by referring to Y-95 as "Y-ny" and ran its own campaign of "Stop Y-ning." As I recall, the "Power" brand was KHYI's attempt to shed the negative image it got after the mudslinging campaign fell flat.

Y-95 was one of many top-40's that ran a campaign like that in 88-90. With the exception of WFLZ in Tampa, none of them did well. Z-99 in Oklahoma City, which was a carbon-copy of Y-95, became "98.9 Kiss FM" about the same time Oldies 94.9 launched. Its attacks on KJ-103 weren't as in-your-face as Y-95's, but it still went negative and lost. The demise of WYTZ in Chicago after launching a similar attack strategy against B-96 is still talked about today. The only reason 'FLZ in Tampa worked was because Q-105 was just THAT bad of a station. It was still mixing in songs that were more than 20 years old when WFLZ dumped oldies for top-40. Ironically, listening to Q-105's classic hits format online, I hear old Y-95 jingles now. Maybe that's not too surprising since Q-105's Mason Dixon did mornings at Y-95 briefly while he was waiting for his non-compete in Tampa to expire.

 

[billyg]

Top 40 as a format was in perilous straits in 1990-93. There was a marked lack of middle ground hits that could build consensus among a broad spectrum of 18-34s. On side you had the rock-based hits of Guns N’ Roses, the Black Crowes, Extreme, etc, while on the other side was Janet Jackson, Boyz II Men, C&C Music Factory, etc. The format’s identity crisis was exacerbated by the fact younger listeners were flocking to other formats altogether: country was white hot and alternative was skyrocketing after Nirvana burst onto the scene in mid '91. Dozens of famous top 40 stations across the station met their demise during this malaise, and both KHYI and KEGL can be counted among those ranks.

Also CHR was hurt by New Kids On The Block mania which chased off a lot of 18+ listeners and way too many one hit wonder artists that couldn't sustain their success. Makes me wonder if CHR could hit this kind of roadblock again with all the "turbo-pop" dance hits the format is playing now.

 

[GeorgeJ.]

Y95 had fallen behind both rock-leaning KEGL and rhythmic-leaning KJMZ by a substantial margin among their target demo in the Winter ’91 book. The “Power” moniker was part of PD Frank Miniaci’s plan to re-image the station upon returning to the market after a stint at KKBT/Los Angeles.

Y-95 also began its mudslinging campaign targeting KEGL just before that book. That loud clicking sound throughout the Metroplex was everyone turning off Y-95 in response! That was when I turned the station off for good. I'll grant you it's nonscientific and that I had fairly small social network, but I didn't know even one person who kept listening to Y-95 after that started. KEGL responded by referring to Y-95 as "Y-ny" and ran its own campaign of "Stop Y-ning." As I recall, the "Power" brand was KHYI's attempt to shed the negative image it got after the mudslinging campaign fell flat.

Y-95 was one of many top-40's that ran a campaign like that in 88-90. With the exception of WFLZ in Tampa, none of them did well. Z-99 in Oklahoma City, which was a carbon-copy of Y-95, became "98.9 Kiss FM" about the same time Oldies 94.9 launched. Its attacks on KJ-103 weren't as in-your-face as Y-95's, but it still went negative and lost. The demise of WYTZ in Chicago after launching a similar attack strategy against B-96 is still talked about today. The only reason 'FLZ in Tampa worked was because Q-105 was just THAT bad of a station. It was still mixing in songs that were more than 20 years old when WFLZ dumped oldies for top-40. Ironically, listening to Q-105's classic hits format online, I hear old Y-95 jingles now. Maybe that's not too surprising since Q-105's Mason Dixon did mornings at Y-95 briefly while he was waiting for his non-compete in Tampa to expire.

As I recall, Mason went to Birmingham to the "Power Cow", and then returned to Tampa after Q105 stopped paying him on his non-compete...