KLUV-FM
Encyclopedia
KLUV, branded as "K-LUV" (K-Love), is a radio station
transmitting on 98.7 FM
, serving the Dallas
/Fort Worth
Metroplex in Texas
with an Oldies
format, however KLUV has slowly leaned into more of a Classic Hits
format with some music from the early 1980s mixed in their playlist since late 2006. KLUV is currently owned by CBS Radio
and affiliated with the CNN Radio Network. The K-Luv name on this station was a holdover from the original Adult Contemporary format from the early 1980s and the more traditional oldies format from the late 1980s and 1990s.
In the late 1950s, the station was first established as KOST. The callsign was initially requested when the application was sent in 1959, but was never used. It was then rebranded KROW and signed on in 1961 as a Top 40 station in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex, owned by Gordon McLendon
. Two years later, the callsign changed to KLIF as a simulcast of sister station KLIF (AM).
In July, 1966, the station changed call letters to KNUS, and began an automated progressive/underground rock format, with live jocks added in mid-1967. When McLendon sold his AM Top 40 flagship KLIF to Fairchild Industries
in 1972, he offered them KNUS as well, but Fairchild declined. As part of the sale, McLendon agreed not to operate any AM station within a 150-mile radius, but since the agreement did not forbid him to operate an FM station, McLendon continued to operate KNUS and, by 1971, had already morphed it into a rock-based Top 40 station which played hit music without the "bubblegum" and "teeny-bopper" material. (The station's initial promotion to plug the new Top 40 format had a disc jockey positioned at the top of a flagpole at McLendon's Gemini Drive-In Theatre. The pole was more of an aerial structure with large "KNUS" lettering mounted vertically to each side of the square truss. The pole was still intact in the 1990s, long after the KNUS calls were dropped and the Gemini shuttered.) McLendon sold KNUS to San Juan Racing in May, 1979, who in turn sold the station to John Tenaglia dba TK Communications (as KLVU) on October 27, 1982.
KNUS eventually transitioned into a more mainstream Top 40, and it paid off when the station passed KLIF in the ratings in the fall of 1975, becoming one of the first FM Top 40 stations to defeat its chief AM competitor. By the end of the 1970s, however, KNUS had fallen out of the top ten, and the station switched to an adult contemporary format as KLVU on October 19, 1981. Initially, the station played hits from 1964 to the 1970s to the 1980s up through and including current product. A handful of pre 64 Oldies were also mixed in. In 1984, after an AM Oldies format changed formats, KLVU began adding more pre 1964 oldies in the mix. The music began to lean slightly more uptempo as well. The station morphed into an all oldies format in 1985, playing pop oldies from the late 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and early 1980s. The music from the mid to late 1970s and 1980s gradually was eliminated in 1986 and by then KLUV was playing the hits from 1955 to 1973.
On December 31, 1985, singer Rick Nelson and his band were en route to KLUV's New Year's Eve Sock Hop, hosted by Ken "Hubcap" Carter. The plane crashed near DeKalb, Texas, killing Nelson and his entourage. Over the years, KLUV evolved into a 1964 to 1969 based oldies format playing a couple pre-1964 songs an hour and one to two early 1970s songs per hour. Tenaglia sold the rebadged KLUV to CBS on April 21, 1995, for a then-staggering $55 million.
The Chuck Brinkman years (1988–2006) included many personalities: Hubcap Carter, Glen Martin (who had also previously been there during the KNUS and KLVU days), Jason Walker, Jonathan Hayes, Johnny Michaels, Steve Eberhart, Al Forgeson, Paula Street (who went to WODS
Boston-now KLUV's sister station-in 1987), Dave Van Dyke, Debi Diaz, John Summers, Jim Prewitt, Jay Cresswell, Bob Gomez, Sandi Sharp, Ben Laurie, Bob deCarlo, Johnny Stone, John McCarty, Mike Wade, Brian Pierce & Kate Garvin.
In 1997, 98.7 KLUV, like many oldies stations around the United States, began mixing in (in this case bringing back) hits of the late 1970s and even a few from the early 1980s. In 1998, the station largely removed the most of the 1955 to 1963 songs from its playlist
. Another CBS station, KLUV (AM) 1190 (later 1190
AM) and, coincidentally, the same dial position as former sister station KLIF), existed from 1998–2000 and primarily played 1950s music. Meanwhile, the main station continued modifying its format to more of a Classic Hits format with songs from the mid 1960s
to early 1980s. By 2003, KLUV was playing no pre 1964 music with a couple exceptions. In 2002, the station was temporarily the "radio home" of the Dallas Cowboys
, featuring live broadcasts of their games. In 2006 Dallas Cowboys broadcasts moved to KTCK
.
In 2005, with the retirement of long-time radio veteran Ron Chapman, KLUV picked up noted Dallas news personality Jody Dean
as replacement.
Most years, on Memorial Day
weekend, KLUV features a "Top 500 Countdown" in which the top 500 oldies, as picked by the station's listeners, are played in descending order for the entire weekend.
KLUV recently launched an HD Radio
sub-station. Originally, it was called "The Fab Format", where fans of The Beatles
could hear their music 24/7, but in January 2008 they've changed the format to include oldies from the 1950s and 1960s, much similar to Citadel Media's True Oldies Channel
. It can be heard on 98.7 HD-2 (HD Radio needed). http://www.kluv.com/pages/78643.php?contentType=4&contentId=200081
From November 23, 1998 to June 27, 2003, it has competed head-on with Disney
/ABC Radio's KMEO ("Memories 96.7"), and again from June 30, 2008 until March 12, 2010 with Citadel Broadcasting
's KPMZ ("Platinum 96.7"). On that particular frequency, both stations aired a Classic Adult Contemporary format playing soft hits of the 1960s to the 1980s with a couple pre '64 songs per hour.
KLUV was the first radio station in the United States to mention Michael Jackson
's death in July 2009.
On October 25, 2010, Jody Dean and the Morning Team started simulcasting on TV on KTXA
.
Radio station
Radio broadcasting is a one-way wireless transmission over radio waves intended to reach a wide audience. Stations can be linked in radio networks to broadcast a common radio format, either in broadcast syndication or simulcast or both...
transmitting on 98.7 FM
FM broadcasting
FM broadcasting is a broadcasting technology pioneered by Edwin Howard Armstrong which uses frequency modulation to provide high-fidelity sound over broadcast radio. The term "FM band" describes the "frequency band in which FM is used for broadcasting"...
, serving the Dallas
Dallas, Texas
Dallas is the third-largest city in Texas and the ninth-largest in the United States. The Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex is the largest metropolitan area in the South and fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States...
/Fort Worth
Fort Worth, Texas
Fort Worth is the 16th-largest city in the United States of America and the fifth-largest city in the state of Texas. Located in North Central Texas, just southeast of the Texas Panhandle, the city is a cultural gateway into the American West and covers nearly in Tarrant, Parker, Denton, and...
Metroplex in Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
with an Oldies
Oldies
Oldies is a term commonly used to describe a radio format that concentrates on music from a period of about 15 to 55 years before the present day....
format, however KLUV has slowly leaned into more of a Classic Hits
Classic hits
Classic hits is a radio format which generally includes rock and pop music from 1964 to 1989. The term is sometimes erroneously used as a synonym for the adult hits format, but is more accurately characterized as a contemporary style of the oldies format...
format with some music from the early 1980s mixed in their playlist since late 2006. KLUV is currently owned by CBS Radio
CBS Radio
CBS Radio, Inc., formerly known as Infinity Broadcasting Corporation, is one of the largest owners and operators of radio stations in the United States, third behind main rival Clear Channel Communications and Cumulus Media. CBS Radio owns around 130 radio stations across the country...
and affiliated with the CNN Radio Network. The K-Luv name on this station was a holdover from the original Adult Contemporary format from the early 1980s and the more traditional oldies format from the late 1980s and 1990s.
History
KLUV was first established on January 26, 1984 and bills itself as a "Classic Top 40" station. Former owner John Tenaglia purchased the more-coveted "KLUV"-spelled call letters for $10,000 from a Haynesville, Louisiana station and trading them 98.7's former KLVU calls (which were established at 98.7 on October 19, 1981 under the station's San Juan Racing ownership.) Continuing its light adult contemporary format from KLVU, the station began incorporating pop oldies into its mix throughout 1984; then, by November, 1985, the station became all-pop oldies after purchasing the record collection of newly-defunct KXOL-1360 AM in Fort Worth at auction.In the late 1950s, the station was first established as KOST. The callsign was initially requested when the application was sent in 1959, but was never used. It was then rebranded KROW and signed on in 1961 as a Top 40 station in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex, owned by Gordon McLendon
Gordon McLendon
Gordon Barton McLendon was a radio pioneer and pirate radio broadcaster. He has been coined the Maverick of Radio. McLendon is widely credited for perfecting, with great commercial success, the Top 40 radio format during the 1950s and 1960s which was first invented by Todd Storz and for developing...
. Two years later, the callsign changed to KLIF as a simulcast of sister station KLIF (AM).
In July, 1966, the station changed call letters to KNUS, and began an automated progressive/underground rock format, with live jocks added in mid-1967. When McLendon sold his AM Top 40 flagship KLIF to Fairchild Industries
Fairchild Industries
Fairchild Industries was created from a name change from Fairchild Hiller Corporation, division and subsidiaries: Fairchild Aircraft Marketing Company, Fairchild Aircraft Services Division, Fairchild Republic Division, Fairchild Space and Electronics Division, Fairchild Stratos Division, Burns Aero...
in 1972, he offered them KNUS as well, but Fairchild declined. As part of the sale, McLendon agreed not to operate any AM station within a 150-mile radius, but since the agreement did not forbid him to operate an FM station, McLendon continued to operate KNUS and, by 1971, had already morphed it into a rock-based Top 40 station which played hit music without the "bubblegum" and "teeny-bopper" material. (The station's initial promotion to plug the new Top 40 format had a disc jockey positioned at the top of a flagpole at McLendon's Gemini Drive-In Theatre. The pole was more of an aerial structure with large "KNUS" lettering mounted vertically to each side of the square truss. The pole was still intact in the 1990s, long after the KNUS calls were dropped and the Gemini shuttered.) McLendon sold KNUS to San Juan Racing in May, 1979, who in turn sold the station to John Tenaglia dba TK Communications (as KLVU) on October 27, 1982.
KNUS eventually transitioned into a more mainstream Top 40, and it paid off when the station passed KLIF in the ratings in the fall of 1975, becoming one of the first FM Top 40 stations to defeat its chief AM competitor. By the end of the 1970s, however, KNUS had fallen out of the top ten, and the station switched to an adult contemporary format as KLVU on October 19, 1981. Initially, the station played hits from 1964 to the 1970s to the 1980s up through and including current product. A handful of pre 64 Oldies were also mixed in. In 1984, after an AM Oldies format changed formats, KLVU began adding more pre 1964 oldies in the mix. The music began to lean slightly more uptempo as well. The station morphed into an all oldies format in 1985, playing pop oldies from the late 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and early 1980s. The music from the mid to late 1970s and 1980s gradually was eliminated in 1986 and by then KLUV was playing the hits from 1955 to 1973.
On December 31, 1985, singer Rick Nelson and his band were en route to KLUV's New Year's Eve Sock Hop, hosted by Ken "Hubcap" Carter. The plane crashed near DeKalb, Texas, killing Nelson and his entourage. Over the years, KLUV evolved into a 1964 to 1969 based oldies format playing a couple pre-1964 songs an hour and one to two early 1970s songs per hour. Tenaglia sold the rebadged KLUV to CBS on April 21, 1995, for a then-staggering $55 million.
The Chuck Brinkman years (1988–2006) included many personalities: Hubcap Carter, Glen Martin (who had also previously been there during the KNUS and KLVU days), Jason Walker, Jonathan Hayes, Johnny Michaels, Steve Eberhart, Al Forgeson, Paula Street (who went to WODS
WODS
- External links :****...
Boston-now KLUV's sister station-in 1987), Dave Van Dyke, Debi Diaz, John Summers, Jim Prewitt, Jay Cresswell, Bob Gomez, Sandi Sharp, Ben Laurie, Bob deCarlo, Johnny Stone, John McCarty, Mike Wade, Brian Pierce & Kate Garvin.
In 1997, 98.7 KLUV, like many oldies stations around the United States, began mixing in (in this case bringing back) hits of the late 1970s and even a few from the early 1980s. In 1998, the station largely removed the most of the 1955 to 1963 songs from its playlist
Playlist
In its most general form, a playlist is simply a list of songs. They can be played in sequential or shuffled order. The term has several specialized meanings in the realms of radio broadcasting and personal computers.-In radio:...
. Another CBS station, KLUV (AM) 1190 (later 1190
KFXR (AM)
KFXR is a radio station in Dallas, Texas, programing classic country when it is not airing brokered programming. It began broadcasting in 1947 as KLIF...
AM) and, coincidentally, the same dial position as former sister station KLIF), existed from 1998–2000 and primarily played 1950s music. Meanwhile, the main station continued modifying its format to more of a Classic Hits format with songs from the mid 1960s
1960s
The 1960s was the decade that started on January 1, 1960, and ended on December 31, 1969. It was the seventh decade of the 20th century.The 1960s term also refers to an era more often called The Sixties, denoting the complex of inter-related cultural and political trends across the globe...
to early 1980s. By 2003, KLUV was playing no pre 1964 music with a couple exceptions. In 2002, the station was temporarily the "radio home" of the Dallas Cowboys
Dallas Cowboys
The Dallas Cowboys are a professional American football franchise which plays in the Eastern Division of the National Football Conference of the National Football League . They are headquartered in Valley Ranch in Irving, Texas, a suburb of Dallas...
, featuring live broadcasts of their games. In 2006 Dallas Cowboys broadcasts moved to KTCK
KTCK
KTCK , is a sports talk radio station based in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex. The station, currently owned by Cumulus Media, has been made popular by the incorporation of humor alongside the sports talk....
.
In 2005, with the retirement of long-time radio veteran Ron Chapman, KLUV picked up noted Dallas news personality Jody Dean
Jody Dean
Jody Dean is an American journalist and author and a member of the Texas Radio Hall of Fame.Born in Fort Worth, Texas, Dean's career in broadcasting began in junior high school, in 1973 on WBAP-TV's "Museum of Horrors". After graduating from Ft. Worth's Paschal High School, Dean took a shift at...
as replacement.
Most years, on Memorial Day
Memorial Day
Memorial Day is a United States federal holiday observed on the last Monday of May. Formerly known as Decoration Day, it originated after the American Civil War to commemorate the fallen Union soldiers of the Civil War...
weekend, KLUV features a "Top 500 Countdown" in which the top 500 oldies, as picked by the station's listeners, are played in descending order for the entire weekend.
KLUV recently launched an HD Radio
HD Radio
HD Radio, which originally stood for "Hybrid Digital", is the trademark for iBiquity's in-band on-channel digital radio technology used by AM and FM radio stations to transmit audio and data via a digital signal in conjunction with their analog signals...
sub-station. Originally, it was called "The Fab Format", where fans of The Beatles
The Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...
could hear their music 24/7, but in January 2008 they've changed the format to include oldies from the 1950s and 1960s, much similar to Citadel Media's True Oldies Channel
The True Oldies Channel
The True Oldies Channel is a syndicated radio programming stream begun in the spring of 2004, hosted by American radio personality Scott Shannon...
. It can be heard on 98.7 HD-2 (HD Radio needed). http://www.kluv.com/pages/78643.php?contentType=4&contentId=200081
From November 23, 1998 to June 27, 2003, it has competed head-on with Disney
The Walt Disney Company
The Walt Disney Company is the largest media conglomerate in the world in terms of revenue. Founded on October 16, 1923, by Walt and Roy Disney as the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, Walt Disney Productions established itself as a leader in the American animation industry before diversifying into...
/ABC Radio's KMEO ("Memories 96.7"), and again from June 30, 2008 until March 12, 2010 with Citadel Broadcasting
Citadel Broadcasting
Citadel Broadcasting Corporation was a Las Vegas, Nevada-based broadcast holding company. Citadel owned 243 radio stations across the United States and was the third-largest radio station owner in the country...
's KPMZ ("Platinum 96.7"). On that particular frequency, both stations aired a Classic Adult Contemporary format playing soft hits of the 1960s to the 1980s with a couple pre '64 songs per hour.
KLUV was the first radio station in the United States to mention Michael Jackson
Michael Jackson
Michael Joseph Jackson was an American recording artist, entertainer, and businessman. Referred to as the King of Pop, or by his initials MJ, Jackson is recognized as the most successful entertainer of all time by Guinness World Records...
's death in July 2009.
On October 25, 2010, Jody Dean and the Morning Team started simulcasting on TV on KTXA
KTXA
KTXA, virtual channel 21 , is an independent television station based in Fort Worth, Texas, and serving the Dallas/Fort Worth designated market area. With its transmitter in Cedar Hill, KTXA is owned by CBS Corporation and is the sister station of CBS outlet KTVT .KTXA was originally an...
.