Paul Coates and Mike Huckabee’s Bluff City Media will lease their four stations in Pine Bluff to Mike and Alpha Horne’s PB Radio starting Sunday, April 1.
Mike Horne has managed the four station cluster for Bluff City Media since December 2016 and will now take over their full operations via an LMA with an option to buy. He told Arkansas Business, “My good friend Paul Coates brought me down here to kind of get them out of trouble. Everybody thinks Pine Bluff is a losing situation, but the town has gotten a bad rap. We’re doing well, and the people are optimistic. There are still problems, but we’ve got a great mayor now [Shirley Washington] and things are looking up.”
Horne previously owned stations in Arkansas, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas and served as COO of Crain Media Group. The four stations he will be taking over are Classic Country “98.1 The Hog” KTPB, Oldies 99.3 KHUC, Urban “101.3 The Beat” KPBA, and Hot AC “104.5 K-Train” KTRN.
Coates & Huckabee will continue to operate their four stations in Tyler TX and the cluster they lease in Branson MO.