Country music radio hadn’t even left the Bay Area before another station made sure it stuck around.
San Jose station KBAY-FM (94.5) switched from its classic hits format to country Tuesday afternoon, less than two weeks after KRTY — at the time the Bay Area’s last country station — announced it had been sold and would go off the air in June.
The last song for Bay 94.5 was Britney Spears’ “Baby One More Time” just before 3 p.m. and then things got a little more twangy with the launch of “Bay Country.”
A local staff, still to be announced, will be joined April 15 by “The Bobby Bones Show,” a syndicated program out of Austin that’s heard on more than 150 stations nationwide and slated to be broadcast on weekday mornings from 6 to 10 a.m. Even if non-country fans don’t know Bones’ co-hosts — Amy, Eddie and Lunchbox — he may be familiar from his appearances on “Dancing with the Stars” and as a mentor on “American Idol.”
“With KRTY’s looming departure from the format, we felt like it was a good move for KBAY to continue to serve the country audience (and expand the format’s signal coverage throughout the greater Bay Area),” said David Durtz, market manager for Alpha Media, which owns both KBAY and KEZR, better known to most as Mix 106.5. “Bay Country” programming also will be carried on Walnut Creek station KKDV-FM (92.1), increasing its reach beyond the South Bay to Contra Costa County, as well as online at www.kbaycountry.com.
That means that for the next couple of months, the Bay Area will be rich with Nashville sounds. At least until June, when KRTY goes off the air after 28 years and its 95.3 signal is turned over to Educational Media Foundation, the Christian broadcaster behind the “K-LOVE” and “Air1” formats.
Source: www.mercurynews.com