Report: KEGL To Flip To Sports/Hot Talk

[Colorado Media Newsroom]

From Radio Insight:

Sports Illustrated’s Richie Whitt is reporting that iHeartMedia Rock “97.1 The Eagle” KEGL Fort Worth/Dallas will flip to Sports as soon as Friday, September 30.
The station will rebrand as “97.1 The Freak” confirming what we first reported earlier this week in our Domain Insight report. Current afternoon hosts Ben Rogers and Jeff ‘Skin’ Wade and Dallas Mavericks basketball will remain on the station, but be accompanied by a number of station newcomers.
Whitt reports that former “1310/96.7 The Ticket” KTCK afternoon host Mike Rhyner will be a part of “The Freak”. Rhyner, aka ‘The Old Grey Wolf’, was co-founder of KTCK in 1994 and has co-hosted “The Hardline” in afternoons from 1995 until his abrupt retirement in January 2020. Other expected hosts mentioned are former KTCK hosts Julie Dobbs and Mike Sirois and former “105.3 The Fan” KRLD-FM host Jeff Cavanaugh.
KEGL would become the third Sports talker in Dallas joining Cumulus’ KTCK/KTCK-FM and Audacy’s KRLD-FM. KTCK currently ranks seventh in the market with a 4.3 share, while KRLD-FM is twenty-third with a 1.8 share. KEGL currently ranks twenty-eighth in the market with a 1.3 share.
This would mark the second time the “Eagle” Rock brand has been killed off from the station. The brand originally launched in 1981 as a Rock/CHR hybrid before moving to Top 40 completely in the late 1980s. It would shift to Active Rock in 1992 until its flip to Soft AC “Sunny 97.1” in 2004 and then Spanish Oldies “La Preciosa 97.1” in 2005. The “Eagle” brand and Rock format would be resurrected in December 2007.
The expectations of a format change at KEGL grew exponentially after late afternoon hosts “The Treehouse” Dan O’Malley and Alfie Coy and Dallas Region President Kelly Kibler were let go and KEGL/KZPS Program Director Don Davis resigned earlier this month.



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