KHKS-FM is a very popular radio station in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, aimed mostly at teens and young adults. The music is mainstream with a mixture of mainly pop and hip-hop/rap, known as a Top 40 or CHR format. It is also known as "Kiss FM".
On weekday mornings there is the Kidd Kraddick show with Kidd Kraddick, Big Al Mack, and Kelly Raspberry (AKA Kellie Raspberry). This is a talk show featuring prank calls as well as discussion of unusual news topics.
Afternoons are hosted by JJ Kincaid. He is the only one on the station without a set feature. He is known for telling upset women who've just been dumped that they are the victim and they need new men in there life to buy them jewelry. He is wildly amusing, yet very overweight. He takes alot of phone calls and talks about things that happen to people everyday, that no one else seems to notice. He is a very abstract thinker.
The evening D.J. is Billy the Kidd, whose show features Dateless in Dallas and the Top 5 Songs based on the most requested songs of that day. Occasionally there are also celebrities that call in along with some reoccurring characters.
| Contact
KHKS KHKS-FM 106.1 KISS FM 14001 N. Dallas Parkway, #300 Dallas, TX 75240 For directions please click here REQUEST LINE: (214) 787-1061 BUSINESS LINE: (214) 866-8000 BUSINESS FAX: (214) 866-8501 For general questions EMAIL: contactus@1061kissfm.com |
Other
FM radio stations in the Dallas/Fort Worth market
KBFB
| KCBI | KDBN | KDGE | KDMX | KEGL | KERA | KEOM | KESS
| KHKS
| KJKK | KKDA
| KLLI |
Kidd Kraddick
Kidd Kraddick has been anchoring mornings at KHKS Dallas since 1991, and continues to achieve consistent ratings success! In the most recent Arbitron, "Kidd Kraddick in The Morning" ranks #1 Women 18-34, #1 Women 25-54, even #1 Persons 25-54. The show became syndicated in 2001, and there are now 35 affiliates nationwide, from Boise, Idaho to Panama City, Florida. Entercom's WEZB, New Orleans saw its best morning ratings in years after its first book carrying the show. Kidd Kraddick believes the most important contribution he makes to his markets is his "Kidd's Kids" program. Started in Dallas 15 years ago, "Kidd's Kids" now impacts the lives of children with special medical needs in every affiliate city. The program funds a $250,000 annual all-expenses-paid trip to Disney World for more than 40 families of children under 12 who suffer from chronic or terminal illness, are physically challenged or have catastrophic impairments.
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Towers of Power
Two Dallas radio stations wage long-running ratings war
Since winter 1996, two local heavyweights - "Kiss FM" KHKS-FM (106.1) and "K104" KKDA-FM (104.5) - have fought for the highest or second-highest share of listeners in the Dallas-Fort Worth area."In terms of a one-two rivalry, this could be the longest in a major market," says Tom Taylor of the M Street Journal, a radio trade publication.
It's not unusual for one major-market station to stay on top for years at a time, Mr. Taylor says, but when it comes to two stations duking it out, "31/2 years is an eternity."
That's 14 Arbitron ratings quarters with no one else in the top two spots, save for a tie in winter 1996 and the following spring. KKDA has been No. 1 the past two quarters, breaking a string of six consecutive quarterly victories by KHKS.
On the surface, the stations' success seems easy enough to explain. KKDA is the only pure urban station in town; KHKS is the only station in town playing pure contemporary hits radio - the industry's name for "Top 40." (KRBV-FM at 100.3 recently switched from rhythm and blues to a subgenre called rhythmic CHR.)
KHKS vice president and general manager Brenda Adriance says the station's tone is set by perennial No. 1 morning man Kidd Kraddick and his team, Kellie Rasberry , Al Mack and Flake .
"We call it the "Mommy and me' station," she says. "And that's really where CHR succeeds. The kids start to listen, and Mom says, "Wow, this is pretty good.' "
KKDA also attracts a wide spectrum of listeners, says Ken Dowe, director of broadcast operations for Service Broadcasting, which owns the station. "We are one of the least rap--intensive urban stations in the country," he says. "We play a really good variety of hits."
Critics of radio consolidation say the growing number of stations and the huge amounts of money being poured into them lead to "micro--formatting," research-generated playlists and, therefore, macro-boredom. The medium has succumbed to an inescapably conventional malaise, critics say, with impersonal stations being run by nameless engineers.
In some cases, those critics are right. But the success of KHKS and KKDA flies in the face of the theory of fragmenting formats. And it flouts - at least for now - the ubiquitous mutterings that the corporate bogeyman has destroyed everything radio does best.
KHKS and KKDA succeed with a time-tested formula that applies to any format. You might not hear the pop ballad "Angel" on KKDA, or the hip-hop ditty "Back That Thang Up" on KHKS, but you will notice that the stations have much in common: long-standing community ties, strong personalities throughout the day, keen marketing instincts, high energy and, ironically, two of the most basic FM formats.
"Shock radio" is the last thing on anyone's mind at the two stations. DJs routinely make public appearances. KKDA has regular listener appreciation parties. KHKS recently sponsored an "End of Summer Bash" at Six Flags' Music Mill Amphitheatre. Each station gives away a seemingly endless list of prizes, from concert tickets to cars, cash to cruises.
In short, few stations play the radio game better than KHKS and KKDA.
"The things that I think drive those radio stations are that they've been in the market for a long time, they have done a great job of branding themselves, and the listeners know what they're going to get when they listen to these radio stations," says Tony Novia, CHR editor for trade publication Radio & Records.
In their own modest ways, the stations' leaders agree.
"We want this radio station [KKDA] to sound the same at 3 o'clock in the morning as it does at 3 in the afternoon," Mr. Dowe says.
Meanwhile, KHKS is "a reflection of our audience," says John Cook, the station's vice president of programming. "We're not generating anything - we don't change every year. We just reflect our audience's tastes."
But KHKS and KKDA-FM are as notable for their differences as they are bound by them. And those differences have earned each station a national reputation.
KKDA is a rarity - a privately owned station succeeding wildly amid corporate giants.
The station is housed with sister stations KKDA-AM (730) and KRNB-FM (105.7) in a small - one is tempted to say ramshackle - one-story, L-shaped building in Grand Prairie, where not even Mr. Dowe's office could be considered glitzy.
Owner Hymen Childs, as legendary for his reclusiveness as for his business acumen, has built a tiny empire that has spawned rumors of dump trucks filled with money backing up to the door.
Walt Love, urban editor for Radio & Records, says KKDA is well--respected nationally for its ability to look beyond the research and figure out what its listeners - and the community - need from the station.
"It's almost like the human element of common sense that these people put into effect," he says. "It ain't about just what the heck a research study says - what about what you know about a local area?"
KKDA's large ratings come primarily from what Arbitron calls TSL, which stands for Time Spent Listening. Several elements go into a station's share, and a weak spot can be overcome by a strength somewhere else.
Although KKDA doesn't attract as many listeners as KHKS, the ones who do tune in listen much longer. In the spring ratings, KKDA's average TSL was 11 hours, compared with KHKS' 6 hours, 45 minutes.
Good TSL is imperative for KKDA's success, Mr. Dowe says, because the station attracts primarily a black audience, and blacks make up only about 15 percent of the area's population.
And the station has to work "extra hard" to keep listeners tuned in, Mr. Dowe says. "We have to make sure that everything we do is specifically on target. We can't afford to make a mistake."
On the other hand, he says, "We don't have to worry about shareholders," so the company has plenty of money to fight with.
KKDA's target audience falls between the ages of 18 and 34, and the station attracts listeners of all races, especially in the mornings, when Skip Murphy, Nanette Lee, Sam Putney, Chris Arnold and Wig are on the air.
KHKS, meanwhile, is owned by radio monolith AMFM Inc., formerly Chancellor Media Corp. The station is housed on the third floor of a shiny bank building near the Dallas North Tollway and Northwest Highway and has the chrome-and-glass, show-biz feel you'd expect at a major metropolitan radio station.
KHKS is highly regarded for riding out the country wave of the early '90s, sticking to its guns, and proving that CHR could succeed, says Mr. Taylor of the M Street Journal.
"KHKS was maybe the most high-profile example in the country of a CHR station zooming to the top," he says. "CHR, like country, is very, very driven by the music that's out there. In the early '90s and mid-'90s, the music just vanished in that format."
In 1989 there were 951 CHR stations; in 1998 there were only 379. KHKS "reminded people everywhere of the virtues and key components of the format - a fun, high-energy morning show, and especially music," Mr. Taylor says.
For its high ratings, KHKS depends on what Arbitron calls "cume" - jargon for the cumulative number of people tuning in for at least 15 minutes in a week. More people listen to KHKS than KKDA, but they don't stay around as long.
In the spring ratings, KHKS' estimated cume was 760,900 listeners; KKDA's was 552,300.
KHKS' target audience is women ages 18 to 34, but it also attracts teens, pre-teens and senior citizens of both sexes.
And in this age of concern over teen violence, both Mr. Dowe and Ms. Adriance describe their stations as musically conservative. KKDA routinely edits songs for foul language, and KHKS sticks primarily to top--selling pop.
As for the ongoing ratings war, Mr. Dowe and Ms. Adriance echo each other almost word for word: They can only worry about their own stations and let the ratings fall where they may. Trying to respond to another station, they say, is the first step toward failure.
"There would be absolutely nothing we could do to gain listeners from KKDA," Ms. Adriance says. "We respond internally - we look at what would we like to do better."
"We can't control what they do," Mr. Dowe says. "We can only control what we do and hope the cream rises."
Still, each side has ample respect for the other. "I think that KHKS-FM is one of the best Top-40 stations in the country," says KKDA program director Skip Cheatham. "We're not bitter enemies; we're friendly competitors in the market."
Mr. Cook at KHKS agrees. "Our station competing with K104? That's a league I want to play in," he says. "They're very, very good."
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Dallas-Fort Worth Radio History
by Alex Casper
The earliest commercial radio stations in the Dallas-Forth Worth area sprung up in the early twenties. Over the next few decades the radio industry flourished through national networks and the sound of big bands. By the forties the AM dial included WBAP, WDAO, WFAA, WPA and WRR. In the fifties, television and the rise of rock and roll forced radio to evolve from block programming to serving specific audiences.
Dallas was the place where much of the concept of top 40 radio was crafted following the success of a Todd Storz station in Omaha, Nebraska. It was Storz who introduced the idea of playing the most popular songs over and over again to radio. According to Steve Eberhart's website www.HistoryofKLIF.com, a Storz associate named Bill Stewart brought ideas to the station and did a show on KLIF. The station successfully brought rock and roll music to Dallas in the mid-fifties.
Gordon McLendon and his father actually put KLIF (1190 AM) on the air in 1947. On day one the station aired a live sportscast of a football game between the Chicago Cardinals and the Detroit Lions. The format was a mix of typical radio programming of the day, which included soap operas, sitcoms, drama, news and sports. The station name came from serving the town of Oak Cliff. Originally it was "KLIF the Parrot" featuring an actual parrot trained to say the call letters. An early KLIF employee while in high school was Wes Wise, who went on to become mayor of Dallas in the seventies.
McLendon began shifting the format from block programming to top 40 gradually from 1952 to 1954. KLIF jocks of the fifties included Kenny Sargent, Bruce Hayes, Gene Edwards and Don Keyes. The air personalities still had control of music selection then as long as it came from the Program Director's playlist based on local sales and the national charts. By June 1954, KLIF was number one in Dallas. It became the usual market leader from the fifties through the seventies. McLendon went on to own and program other stations around the country. His formula for success involved putting programming as a priority ahead of administration, sales and engineering.
KLIF faced competition beginning in 1958 when Balaban Broadcasting purchased KGKO (1480 AM) from Lakewood Broadcasters for a little less than half a million dollars. Before becoming head of Paramount Pictures, Barney Balaban changed the call letters to KBOX, named after his company's President John Box. Box took the station top 40, which by that point leaned toward teen music, characterized by the emerging sound of rock and roll and the growing popularity of rhythm and blues. Early KBOX jocks included Big Dan Ingram, Jerry Clemmons, Pat Hughes, Johnny Borders, Roger Barkley and Chuck Benson.
KBOX, calling itself "The Dallas Tiger," rose from bottom of the market to solid challenger for top station KLIF. By 1960 it had become a tighter race, although KLIF still led the market. KLIF assumed a wider lead after it began hiring KBOX air talent including Chuck Dunaway and Ken Dowe. McLendon eventually named Dowe his National Program Director. Although KBOX began to slide in the ratings in the early sixties, the station rebounded in 1965 as "Jolly Green Giant" Frank Jolle took over the night show, up against Jimmy Rabbitt at KLIF. Jolle's show rose to the top at night after Jimmy Rabbitt moved to afternoons. Jolle was also the Music Director of KBOX under the programming of Bill Ward. Jolle later resurfaced on KVIL. Ward went on to become President of Metromedia's radio division and then President of the Gene Autry-owned radio chain, Golden West Broadcasters.
The first news reports that President Kennedy had been shot on November 22, 1963, came from KBOX reporter Ron Jenkins. KBOX was the only station in town broadcasting live coverage of the motorcade, with Jenkins on the scene. Jenkins later gave witness testimony to the Warren Commission.
After John Box left the company, Balaban sold KBOX to Group One Broadcasting in 1967. The new management flipped the format to country in early 1967, keeping the KBOX call letters. The thinking was that the only other country station in Dallas at the time was KPCN, which only operated during daytime hours. In its first Arbitron ratings book as a country station, KBOX advanced to top three and remained near the top for the next six years, although the peak of its ratings success was in the Fall of 1967.
Another country station came on the scene in May 1970, which was WBAP (820 AM). The station previously had a programming agreement with WFAA doing news. But WBAP now was completely country and had a much stronger signal, 50,000 watts, than the 5000 watt KBOX, which began to fade from the competition in 1973, when Arbitron began combining Dallas and Fort Worth as one market. Since the KBOX signal only covered Dallas and not Fort Worth, WBAP became the country leader in the Dallas-Fort Worth market. Yet another rival arrived when Susquehanna flipped KPLX to country in 1980. Two years later KBOX AM, completely beaten by competitors, took on sister 100.3 FM call letters KMEZ and also inherited the FM's "beautiful music" format.
FM replaced AM as the desired band for music by the early eighties. Following the migration of music stations to FM, KLIF inevitably became a talk station. The leading stations in the market by the end of the eighties were adult contemporary combo KVIL (1150 AM and 103.7 FM), country station KPLX (99.5 FM), competing country station KSCS (96.3 FM) and urban contemporary leader KKDA (104.5 FM). Other stations that appeared regularly high in the ratings included top 40 rivals KEGL (97.1 FM) and KHYI (94.9 FM), news leader KRLD (1080 AM) and rock station KTXQ (102.1 FM). KEGL "The Eagle," remained rock until 2004 and then flipped to adult contemporary under Clear Channel.
One of the first successful alternative stations in the country (besides KROQ in Los Angeles and 91X in San Diego) was KDGE, known as The Edge. The station had been top 40 until a general national decline of the format in 1989, when it took a chance at flipping to alternative. An early programmer of The Edge was Joel Folger, who went on to become a national radio consultant for alternative stations.
Throughout the nineties and early 2000s KHKS (106.1 FM, "Kiss") was the market leader, playing the latest hits, under the programming of Mr. Ed Lambert. The station was number one (12+) for years when it was owned by Chancellor, who also owned KDGE ("The Edge"). Urban station KKDA, owned by Service Broadcasting, rose to number one in the market in the mid-to-late nineties.
With the Telecom Act of 1996 came immediate changes in the radio ownership arena. Companies began a merger frenzy and stations changed hands frequently. Chancellor became AMFM, the biggest radio chain at the end of the nineties. In 2000, AMFM was absorbed by Clear Channel in a merger that created the world's biggest radio empire.
In the mid-2000s, Dallas is now the fifth biggest radio market in the country. Top stations of the mid-2000s include Univision's Regional Mexican stations KESS-FM and KLNO, Service's urban mainstay KKDA, Susquehanna's KPLX, which remains the country format leader in the market and Clear Channel's KHKS (Kiss, contemporary hits). Clear Channel owns KHKS, KDGE, KZPS, KDMX and KEGL while Infinity owns KLUV (oldies), KJKK (adult hits), KOAI (Smooth Jazz), KLLI (talk) and KVIL (adult contemporary). On the AM dial WBAP-AM, owned by ABC, is the leader with news/talk.