Why Classic Country Can Be “Big Country”

As a longtime fan of the Classic Country format, I’ve been heartened by the current success of KVOO (Big Country 99.5) Tulsa, Okla. That station, which recently reclaimed its legendary call letters in a swap with mainstream sister KXBL (The Bull), was the No. 1-listed Country station, up 5.7-6.2 in February’s Nielsen ratings. (Longtime rival KWEN [K95] doesn’t subscribe, but KVOO is a great story regardless.) In March, it was the published market leader.

I’ve been heavily involved with Classic Country for the last six months, but I’ve been fortunate to do research in the format for more than 20 years, and a fan for much longer than that. Classic Country has been fortunate to have fans among group owners including Midwest Communications and now Lotus, which launched its version of the syndicated “Hank FM” on KPLZ Seattle and recently upgraded the format’s frequency in Las Vegas.

Since its launch, KPLZ has always been at least No. 2 in Seattle’s three-way Country war, and edged out a win for two months last year. Also, according to ratings scorekeeper Chris Huff, Midwest’s KDKE (Duke FM) Duluth, Minn., led or was tied for the lead throughout last year. iHeart’s WESC Greenville, S.C., is currently beating mainstream sister WSSL, and there are other success stories as well.

Older titles were prominent on the music test unveiled at Country Radio Seminar this year. Another CRS study suggested that listeners were most interested in hearing those songs as part of a yesterday-and-today mix, and while I believe many mainstream outlets could better use library titles, I still believe strongly in the viability of Classic Country for many markets and for a number of reasons. 

There’s more viable Classic Country than Mainstream Country can play. The Classic Country presence was even stronger on the 2023 CRS music test, when more songs were being included. In the gold-based music tests I’ve seen going back to the mid-’00s, Classic Country has always had depth and strong scores, comparable to what you’d expect in any other gold-based format such as Classic Hits or Adult R&B. With mainstream stations still protecting their “No. 1 for New Country” image at all costs, they can’t fill the demand with one staged “throwback” an hour.

As with Classic Hits, you don’t have to dislike new music to like the classics. The CRS study showed relatively little concentrated interest in the ’80s and ’90s, compared to subsequent decades, but there’s no reason Classic Country stations have to survive off that listening, particularly in a time when listeners are less tethered to their high-school years only. (Some older Country titles do better with younger listeners because the music is more novel to them.) Most markets support both Mainstream AC, which plays a thin top tier of the ’80s, and a Classic Hits station that can go deeper.

For much of the ’90s, Country was more of a shared experience than Top 40. Years ago, Classic Country was disadvantaged by a lack of listeners who had grown up with the format in the ’70s and ’80s. During the ’90s boom, however, Country had a younger audience and was heard by more people than the troubled Top 40 format of that time. Songs like “She’s in Love With the Boy” and “Boot Scootin’ Boogie” had a much bigger footprint than “Crazy” by Aerosmith, “If It Makes You Happy” by Sheryl Crow, or some of the other songs that Classic Hits is now using to fill its ’90s categories.

Classic Country radio could repatriate listeners from streaming. The two CRS music tests showed that the Country fans who preferred streaming were motivated more by older music than the edgier new artists associated with Country streaming. It’s additional proof that Mainstream Country can’t cover the entire need. 

Whether Mainstream Country is contemporary or traditional at the moment is a red herring. Country’s most phenomenal record in recent memory — Ella Langley’s “Choosin’ Texas – sounds like a late-’70s/early-’80s Country hit. So did “7 Summers,” the song that revealed Morgan Wallen as phenomenal. There is sometimes the assumption that when contemporary Country leans more traditional that there’s less need for older Country.

If that were the case, though, more contemporary titles would be performing well on Mainstream Country music tests. For many listeners, the new retro still doesn’t match the originals. The early-’10s success of “Cruise” and other Hip-Hop influenced Country hits represented a musical shift, even from the edgy Classic Rock-based songs that helped revitalize Country music a few years earlier. Since then, even when Country music has been twangy, it has also been trappy.

There are certainly listeners who appreciate Classic Country as “real country.” There are others who just want to hear music they don’t hear enough of on the radio anymore, whether that’s George Strait or Shania Twain. I’d wondered how Classic Country would fare when it got to the late-’90s/early-’00s format doldrums. As it turns out, there’s more than enough music from that era to cherry-pick, and it doesn’t sound out of place.

If you’re a fan of Classic Country, you’ll be happy to know that Record Research is taking pre-orders for “Top Country Singles 1944-2025.” It’s the first new title since the arrival of new CEO Vinnie Freda. Besides the chart history of nearly 3,000 artists and more than 22,000 songs, the new volume will also feature a first-ever ranking of Country’s 40 biggest songwriters. Publication is set for June. More information is available here.

I’ve heard Big Country 99.5 several times over the last few months. The addition of the venerable KVOO call letters has given the station an additional promotional angle, celebrating “100 Years, 100 Beers” with Miller Lite. They’re also giving three clues a day to the location of their “Loot Boot.” Here’s a sample of Big Country 99.5 on the evening of December 18 last year:

• Marshall Tucker Band, “Fire on the Mountain”
• Tracy Byrd, “Watermelon Crawl”
• Merle Haggard & Willie Nelson, “Pancho and Lefty”
• Rascal Flatts, “Bless This Broken Road”
• Diamond Rio, “Mirror Mirror”
• Garth Brooks, “Friends in Low Places”
• Kenny Chesney, “You Had Me From Hello”
• Waylon Jennings, “Theme from The Dukes of Hazzard”
• Shania Twain, “Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been Under?”

And here’s the station from Tuesday at 5 p.m. — the first half is a “drive-at-5”-type feature with PD/p.m. driver Tanner Messer:

• Hank Williams Jr., “Family Tradition”
• Mary Chapin Carpenter, “Passionate Kisses”
• Vince Gill, “Don’t Let Our Love Start Slippin’ Away”
• Merle Haggard, “It’s Been a Great Afternoon”
• Kenny Chesney, “Young”
• Alan Jackson, “Chasin’ That Neon Rainbow”
• Faith Hill, “This Kiss”
• Roger Miller, “Deeper Than the Holler”
• Tim McGraw, “Something Like That”
• Alabama, “Love in the First Degree”
• Don Williams, “Lord, I Hope This Day is Good”