According to a report in the Dallas Observer, the 16-month run of talk on KEGL-FM, Dallas as The Freak is over, and the station is returning to its rock roots as “97.1 The Eagle.” The Observer piece cites Athlon Sports’ report by Richie Whitt that broke the news. Dallas radio legend Mike Rhyner – who joined the
station after retiring from Cumulus Media’s crosstown sports talker KTCK-AM/FM “The Ticket” tells the Observer that he and castmates Julie Dobbs and Jeff Cavanaugh were let go on Friday (4/26). Rhyner says, “I could be standing at the New Mexico border and still see this coming. It’s a feeling that I and plenty of others at the station had been getting for some time now. iHeartRadio is a music company that really doesn’t do that much talk radio, and the talk radio they do is not local or locally originated, and they got caught into something [97.1 The Freak] they didn’t know anything about, and they were kind of overwhelmed by it, and they decided that ‘this is not our bag.’” Whitt’s Athlon story noted that “lagging ratings” and the talent expense [high overhead] had the station in corporate’s fiscal sights. Read the Observer piece here.
