Howard Kroeger is President and CEO of La Salle Manitoba based Kroeger Media. In 2002, Kroeger created and launched the Variety/Adult Hits format at BOB-FM “The ‘80s, ‘90s and Whatever.”
The format launched in Manitoba, Canada, and has been a huge success across North America since. This led to the creation of HANK-FM, a Classic Country format. HANK-FM “Plays the Legends of Country.”
I had the chance to catch up with Kroeger and pick his brain about the popularity of Classic Country music and what makes HANK-FM tick.
“It’s very interesting because I experienced this when I created the BOB format, and what happened was that we seem to look back two decades, and that’s when our nostalgia really starts to emanate from our pores. You think back to the ’70s, we were fixated on the ’50s, ‘Happy Days,’ and ‘American Graffiti.”’
“You go back to the ‘70s with a fixation on the ‘50s, in the ’80s we had this fixation on the ‘60s, in the ’90s we had this fixation on the ’70s, and all of a sudden, 2000 comes along, and you’d think it would be looking back 20 years, but peer to peer came along, it really kind of screwed things up.”
Kroeger believes that the current Country music contributes to the passion for the music and is a point of entry.
“I think Young Country has maybe become an ambassador for Classic Country. But I really think that a lot of it has to do with looking back, and I think it’s that nostalgia. When we look back, it just happens to be that the ’90s were that period of time when the music was great. The interesting thing is that it’s taken us a bit longer to get there than usual. I swear, if we didn’t have the internet, or we didn’t have digital, the fascination with Classic Country from the ‘90s would have happened a little sooner.”
“Streaming has changed everything. Because in the streaming era, music composition is not linear anymore. A 45-year-old might be streaming Luke Combs and George Strait in the same session. A 30-year-old male or female might binge on early 2000s Rascal Flatts, just like they came out last week.”
“In some ways, life groups and age demos don’t mean what they used to. People’s musical identities now stretch across eras and formats, and it’s shaped more by personal playlists than traditional timelines, and that’s one of the things I’ve observed. I’ve taken that, and that’s how we program HANK. We want to program HANK-FM in a way that reflects how people consume and feel music today.”
Part of HANK’s soul is imaging. Something that Kroeger Media provides for affiliates.
“The imaging has personality, it’s wry, funny, and a little sarcastic. It’s never too polished, and that voice that we have speaks directly to the audience without pandering. There’s a bit of rebellious charm in it. Kind of like your buddy at the bar with good taste and a lot of opinions.”
“That irreverent tone makes HANK stand out. I hate to say it, but there are a lot of vanilla brands out there. We have taken advantage of that. I think the other thing that we’ve done too is that we’ve taken advantage of, in a good way, and we really hang our hat on the one thing we can do better than a streaming service.”
“The things that we come up with in between the music, it’s great imaging, and it’s pass-alongs to things the audience might not know in bite-sized chunks. In that way, we’re all storytellers, and that challenge is to get that story and the imaging across, evoke some emotion, and get back to the songs.”
Kroeger sees parallels between Classic Rock and Classic Country.
“Classic Rock could learn from what we do on HANK and BOB as well. Like I said, we live in the streaming age, there are so many songs that are getting a second life that were maybe never played or weren’t big hits on the radio before. But they’re great songs, one of them that comes to mind is a song like “Spilled Perfume” by Pam Tillis. It wasn’t a streaming hit, but man, that sounds good when it comes on the radio.”
“There are so many good songs out there, and the other thing is that people are consuming music differently. As my friend Sean Ross would say, it’s a digital jukebox, and everything is available. We’re always looking for those songs, which, by the way, we also test.”
“Aside from being an artsy guy, I’m also a science guy. I came up through the ranks working for Chum Broadcasting in Canada, and we worked with a research group out of Seattle the whole time I was there. I had some magnificent teachers. So, the science is very important as well.”
Is there a musical center to HANK?
“I would say, yes, absolutely. The ‘90s, that’s the heart of the format. It’s interesting because we do music research, two big tests every year, and what is interesting is that some of the ‘80s songs, the scores on these songs are just amazing. I’m talking about songs like the theme from ‘The Dukes of Hazzard.’ Another one that blew me away was Alabama, ‘The Cheap Seats.”’
“In this huge test that we do, there’s usually about 100 or so ‘80s tracks that just blow everything out of the water. I would say 60% ‘90s, 20% ‘80s, and 20% 2000s. The analogy I always use with the ‘80s stuff and how well it does is like somebody going to a Ruth’s Chris steakhouse for the steak, but all of a sudden they realize they really love the lobster. They just don’t tell anybody.”
I wondered if, aside from local imaging, the HANK in Seattle is the same as the HANK in Las Vegas or Salt Lake City?
“We have quite a few stations across the country, in the larger markets like Seattle, Vegas, Tucson and Salt Lake City. I have built everything for the clients, and they take it and then run with it. I guess it’s a traditional consultant-type relationship. The only difference is that we do the creative work for it, too.”
Even though this is primarily a Country piece about HANK, I couldn’t let Kroeger get away without hearing about the pioneering BOB-FM format.
“BOB has fed my family for 23 years, which is kind of crazy. The first BOB was in Winnipeg, Manitoba, my hometown, on March 4th, 2002, and it’s done well. Now, the irony about that is that Bell, who ended up buying CHUM, rebranded the BOBs as Bounces here in Canada, I have BOB in the U.S., and it’s done very well for us. HANK is probably the Country version of BOB, if that’s a good analogy.
“The whole idea is with both formats, it’s about playing great music. It’s about putting a smile on people’s faces. About not taking yourself too seriously. It’s about trying to create a radio station that has a personality before any announcers get on the station. The personality is based on somebody you like to hang around with. It’s just kind of like a good dude.”
I suggested that Kroeger likely loved his radio “children,” BOB and HANK, equally.
“They can get unruly sometimes. It’s worked out well. What makes it easy is that it’s fun to do. We do have a good time and get joy out of sounding good. Our motto has always been, it doesn’t matter if you’re in Los Angeles or Walla Walla, Washington, you should sound good. It should be good production, good elements, good everything.”
“I believe that we are on the right path. We’re not satellite. We’re not cookie-cutter. We try to come up with a unique solution for every market we do. So yeah, that’s my story.”
To find out more about HANK and BOB, contact Kroeger Media.
Reach Howard Kroeger by email here.
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Jeff Lynn serves as Editor of Barrett Media’s Music Radio coverage. Prior to joining Barrett Media, Jeff spent time programming in Milwaukee, Omaha, Cleveland, Des Moines, and Madison for multiple radio groups, including iHeartMedia, Townsquare Media, NRG Media, and Entercom (now Audacy). He also worked as a Country Format Editor for All Access until the outlet shut down in August 2023.
To get in touch with Jeff by email, reach him at Jeff@BarrettMedia.com.
