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Towers of Power

Two Dallas radio stations wage long-running ratings war

By Al Brumley Staff Writer of The Dallas Morning News 
Published August 25, 1999
(c) 1999-2002 Dallas Morning News


A mighty battle is being waged on your radio dial.

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."