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George Strait (shown in a file photo from his 2009 concert at Cowboys Stadium) will be one of the core artists on 92.1 Hank-FM, which will play country music ranging from the '70s to today.
A few days ago, I put up this brief post about the air staff of Fort Worth-based country station KTFW/92.1 FM. Midday personality Debi Diaz posted about it on her Facebook page, and it's now confirmed that afternoon DJ/program director Sam "Lee" Whitmire and morning man Brian Christopher are also gone.
What's behind all the exits? Hank. Or more precicsely, 92.1 Hank-FM. By the time this post goes live -- I was asked to wait, and I honored that request -- KTFW will be Hank-FM. The "Hank" format (which includes Hank Williams Jr. but not Sr., except in specialty shows) is, as you might guess, similar to the Jack FM format, except that Hank plays country from the 1970s through the present day). The Hank format already exists in markets such as Indianapolis and Tallahassee (interesting call letters there, Tallahassee). (UPDATE/Correction: I've just been informed by a loyal reader that the Tallahassee Hank is a pop station -- in other words, their Hank is a Jack. But the call letters are still funny.)
The format was created by Howard Kroeger (the Kroeger Media site includes a sample), who created the Jack-like Bob-FM. KTFW operations director Andy Meadows says he's been working with Kroeger to give the "Westoplex" Hank its own spin.
"There are a couple of other Hank-FMs across the country, but ours is unique," Meadows said Thursday. "We're doing a different twist on the database in ours. It's a very wide variety. It's country all the way back to the '70s, with your Waylon and Willie and Merle, all the way to new country. The emphasis is on variety. Where your average country station has a 350-song playlist, we have well over 1,000, so it's three times the size of your average country station, and it's delivered with a fun attitude."
It is not, however, delivered with DJs. Although there will be breaks for local news, sports, traffic and weather, the station will be jock-free, like Jack-FM is.
"It's just a whole lot of music," Meadows says. "So, unfortunately, going in that new direction, Sam Lee, Debi Diaz and Brian are no longer with us, which is unfortunate, because they were great employees, very professional. It had nothing to do with their performance, their talent or anything like that."
Meadows has been with the station for nine years, as evolved from a "Country Gold" station to a format that focused on the '80s and '90s. It's in a tough country market that includes stations with full-market signals such as KSCS/96.3 FM and KPLX/99.5 FM (both owned by Cumulus Media), as well as a number of players that don't cover the entire market, such as Plano's KHYI/95.3 FM and KTFW's sister station, KFWR/95.9 FM "The Ranch."
"In the past, we would focus on programming away from the other guys," Meadows says. "We would look at 'em and say, 'OK, they're playing mainly Top 40 country and a little bit of recurrents. So we've got to stay away from the new country, because they're playing so much of that.' ... I got to looking at it, and I really want to focus on appealing to appealing to as many country listeners on the western side -- what we call the 'Westoplex' -- as possible."
Meadow said other core artists will include -- well, who you'd expect: Longtimers such as George Strait and Reba McEntire, and relatively more recent stars such as Brad Paisley and Josh Turner. You will probably hear Hank Williams Jr. on Hank-FM, but not Hank Sr., except possibly on Joe Bielinski's Sunday-night Classic Country Review, which is still part of the station.
The station's signal covers primarily Johnson, Parker, Hood, Wise and Tarrant Counties, although the existence of another North Texas 92.1 -- Farmersville's KXEZ -- means that KTFW can't fully penetrate eastern parts of Tarrant County. Meadows says the station is different from full-market stations because it pays attention to Tarrant and points west, while the Dallas-based stations focus mostly on Dallas.
"You can tell the difference in things like our traffic," Meadows says. "When they do traffic, you hear 'Dallas, Dallas, Dallas' -- 45 seconds of Dallas and 10 seconds of Fort Worth traffic, and there's a lot of busy roads over here."
The Ranch, which like KTFW is owned by LKCM Media Group, will not be affected by the changes at KTFW. KTFW will keep its call letters, which are certainly better call letters than the ones for that Tallahassee station. The new format launched at 6 a.m. Friday.
