TNT newspaper promotes FM station’s format change

Tacoma News Tribune (November 13, 1969) – Modern country music on a new, 12-hour, daily format will be aired by KTNT-FM, 97.3mc, Tacoma, starting Monday, it was announced Thursday by Max Bice, general manager of KTNT AM-FM and TV. From 6 a.m. until 7 p.m. daily, the station will be featuring such artists as Glen Campbell, Henson Cargill, Faron Young, David Houston, Tammy Wynette, Carl Smith, Johnny Cash and many others who are topping the national rating charts in the Country-Western field. The music format will be handled by disc jockeys Bob Peters, new to the KTNT-FM staff and recently with a Seattle Country-Western station; Dick Gray; and Bob Walker, program director of KTNT-FM. Larry Brehmer, widely known veteran of the western music field in the Puget Sound area as the Crazy Cowboy, will do an expanded two-hour program each Saturday morning starting at 6.
The new sound will be aired on a Monday through Saturday basis with the Sunday schedule unchanged and highlighted by the popular Spectrum series. Bice said the music format switch followed a lengthy and detailed analysis of FM programming, which shows the fast-growing popularity of the modern country music field was served only by two AM stations and partially by one FM.
A pioneer of FM operations in the Northwest, KTNT-FM inaugurated its broadcast of frequency modulation transmission in October of 1948. Until April of this year programs were simulcast with KTNT-AM. Since spring, the station has been airing a middle-of-the-road album sound along with special musical features. The change puts the FM operation in business virtually as a separate broadcast facility. Carl Lambert will continue to handle commercial activity for KTNT-FM.
KTNT-FM operates with 10,000 watts radiated power with a signal at 97.3mc., beaming clear reception to the metropolitan Seattle-Tacoma and Everett areas as well as northward to Victoria, B.C., and Port Angeles, south to the Grays Harbor area and Southwest Washington. In addition to the new country programming concept, the station will feature international and national news from the mutual broadcasting system combined with coverage of regional and local news from the KTNT news department.