Update 7/9: “104.9 The Hawk” made its debut at 12pm today following six hours of stunting with Christmas music. The new format is launching its “Commercial Free Summer” with the normal 10,000 songs in a row.
Listen to the launch of The Hawk at FormatChange.com.
Update 7/8: KBOB-FM will make the flip to Country “104.9 The Hawk” on Wednesday, July 9.
GM Bruce Law told the Quad Cities Business Journal that the station will begin stunting with Christmas Music at 6am on Wednesday before launching the new format in the midday.
KBOB-FM Morning hosts Dave Levora and Darren Pitra are exiting with the flip.
Original Report 7/6: A flip to Country is imminent at Townsquare Media Active Rock “Rock 104.9” KBOB-FM De Witt, IA.
Townsquare has registered 1049TheHawk.com and TheHawk1049.com with the logo on its new Facebook page branding the station as “New Country”. A flip to Country would place 104.9 in direct competition with Clear Channel’s 103.7 WLLR, which currently dominates the market with an 18.2 share in the Fall 2013 Nielsen Audio ratings, with a 10 share lead on the next closest station. KBOB-FM was eight in the market with a 4.1 share.
This would be the second flip in a couple of weeks at Townsquare Media’s Quad Cities cluster following the shift of Hot AC “Star 93.5” KQCS to Sports “ESPN 93.5” in mid-June. Townsquare has begun the process of swapping call letters in the cluster as well. 1170 KJOC Davenport is now KBOB, while 93.5 has applied to switch from KQCS to KJOC and 104.9 has applied to switch from KBOB-FM to KQCS.
Owen McCormick 
elcartero 
theoutsider 
It’s about time!
KQCS? Why? Why not choose some calls that would fit “Hawk”, like KHWK or something? That one’s actually available!
Or better yet why not keep the KBOB-FM calls? Those were used with all the previous country formats on 99.7 and 104.9.
Still not sure what their intentions are for 1170 yet though. With them using the KBOB-AM calls now, I’m gonna put my vote down for Classic Country.
Previous ownership attempted country on the same frequency and it failed, even after several reboots. Will this new attempt to go after WLLR be more successful. With WLLR’s dominance of the market, I suppose a consistent 5 or 6 share could be considered a victory. The social media reaction from the disenfranchised Active Rock fans of the QCA have been quite entertaining.