Recorded the same day as an aircheck of 100.7 KHYS, another Clear Channel “Kiss-FM” branded CHR from Abilene, TX, we stay in the Lone Star State for this, slightly longer ‘check of KCRS. The difference between these two stations primarilly is that KHYS at 100.7 changed formats to Rock some time ago. KCRS is still a KISS-Branded CHR to this day.
Featured is a female personality who doesn’t give her name. Its a straight ahead, forward moving format (meaning, the jock doesn’t speak over outros, only intros, and only does artist-related patter). Pretty generic in that respect.
Noteables: Imaging by the great Jeff Berlin…. and there’s ONE sweeper at about one minute in that we found rather humorous… “Listen to the Bee and you’ll hear this: yo yo yo, yo yo yo, yo yo yo…” Rather funny, unless, of course, you’re a big Rap fan!
This ‘sameness’ between stations of similar formats, especially by Clear Channel back in the early part of the 2000s, is something that’s been decried by many ‘old timers’ of radio broadcasting, but not necessarilly format brand managers and consultants – some who feel that this similarity between stations is good for brand building. For those of you not in radio, all this means is that the bottom line is a streamlined station that doesn’t take chances, plays the ‘safe’, proven hits (depending upon the station format) and maintains a low overhead. In short, the bean counters love this kind of radio.
Apparently, so did the kids. Back in ’02, smartphones were still a few years away and internet & satellite radio really hadn’t caught on enough to make a dent in terrestrial radio’s ratings, so, of the potential audience of CHR, kids 12+ were the big audience of most of the Kiss-FMs in the nation. Did they turn a profit? Apparently KCRS did, its still around. Those CHRs that don’t fly with the audience (or the average listener is 8 years old), they end up changing formats rather quickly these days. And when we say ‘these days’… we really mean from about 2000 to present. That puts this KCRS aircheck into the modern realm for now… but perhaps one day, this will be a real historic aircheck. Only time will tell depending upon what direction modern radio evolves going into the future.
The imaging on this station is voice by Dave Kampel. Most of the imaging back in those days was plug-n-play from a CC Imaging network site.