There are easier ways to start a radio war than putting George Strait on an AM station in Seattle, but I have to admit this one made me smile.
Hubbard has taken longtime brokered-talk 1150 KKNW and turned it into Bull Classics, simulcasting the Classic Country presentation already living on 98.9 KPNW-HD2. That gives Hubbard a second Country product in the market alongside 98.9 The Bull and puts Bull Classics directly across the musical fence from Lotus Communications’ 101.5 Hank FM.
So yes, Seattle now has another Country fight.
Again.
The difference is that this one is not New Country against New Country. Hubbard is creating a flank around The Bull with the artists who built the format: George Strait, Alan Jackson, Reba McEntire, Garth Brooks, Brooks & Dunn, Shania Twain, Toby Keith and the enormous catalog of records that Country radio spent the 1990s and early 2000s turning into permanent memories.
And if you know anything about Seattle radio history, that makes more sense here than somebody looking at a map might realize.
Country music has been a serious part of the Puget Sound radio landscape for generations. KMPS became Country in the 1970s and eventually turned into one of Seattle’s most durable format success stories. By 2004, the station was entering roughly its 30th year in Country and had survived challenge after challenge, from KAYO to KRPM to Young Country KYCW. There were stretches when KMPS wasn’t merely winning the Country audience. It was sitting at or near the top of the entire market.
Seattle has also had Classic Country before.
Around the beginning of this century, 1090 KYCW operated as the Classic Country companion to KMPS. Tall Paul Fredricks moved there from KMPS mornings, Becky Brenner programmed both stations, and the music reached backward into the Country catalog while KMPS concentrated on the contemporary side. SeattlePI was writing about that arrangement more than 25 years ago.
Sound familiar?
That is essentially the architecture Hubbard is building now.
98.9 The Bull handles the new stuff.
Bull Classics handles the memory.
Same Country umbrella. Different part of the listener’s life.
There is logic to that.
There is also a very real competitor already standing in the way.
101.5 Hank has spent the last two and a half years building itself around exactly this older Country appetite. Lotus flipped the former Star 101.5 into Hank on April 1, 2024, and the station has continued leaning heavily into the Country records that many current Country stations simply do not have enough room to play anymore.
Hank’s local credibility is worth mentioning too.
Program Director and afternoon host Jeff Connell grew up in Renton and graduated from Renton High School. He remembers the period when Country exploded in this market because he lived it. He also worked at KMPS and at the wonderfully strange Young Country 96.5 experiment that longtime Seattle listeners will absolutely remember. His current station biography names Brooks & Dunn, Travis Tritt and Mary Chapin Carpenter among the artists closest to his own musical wheelhouse.
That means this is not simply two computers fighting over the same gold library.
There is local history attached to the music.
And that is where this gets fun.
Seattle Country radio has been competitive for a long time. KMPS battled The Wolf. Before that, KMPS fought KAYO, KRPM and Young Country. When 100.7 The Wolf arrived in late 2005, it immediately put pressure on KMPS, and the Country audience became one of the most closely watched format battles in the market.
Then everything changed.
KMPS disappeared in 2017 after decades in Country. Seattle lost one of the format’s great heritage brands, and The Wolf effectively inherited the contemporary Country lane.
Fast-forward to April 1, 2024, and suddenly everybody apparently remembered Seattle liked Country.
Hubbard returned 98.9 to The Bull identity.
Lotus launched Hank later the same day.
Seattle went from one major Country choice to three in a matter of hours.
Two years later, Hubbard is making another move.
Only now it is attacking the catalog.
That is smart.
Because the current Country audience and the Classic Country audience overlap, but they are not identical. There are listeners who like Luke Combs and Morgan Wallen and still want Garth, Reba and Alan. There are also listeners who will tolerate exactly three current Country songs before asking why somebody took George Strait away from them.
Those listeners are real.
Hank has been serving them.
Now Bull Classics wants some of them too.
The most interesting part may be the frequency Hubbard chose to use.
1150 has lived a lot of lives.
Long before KKNW became known for brokered and alternative talk, that AM facility went through music, business programming, Classic R&B, news and assorted talk incarnations. SeattlePI was documenting the frequency bouncing between business talk, soul and R&B and eventually a mixture of local talk programming more than two decades ago.
Under the KKNW identity, the station eventually became one of the more unusual outlets in Seattle radio.
It gave airtime to people and subjects that larger stations often did not touch.
Locally produced talk.
Personal-growth programs.
Community voices.
Specialty programming.
Foreign-language shows.
Sports.
The station carried Seattle Thunderbirds hockey and college sports at various points, and Hubbard was still marketing KKNW right up to this change around the idea that local people could essentially build their own programs there.
There is some loss in that.
We should acknowledge it.
Brokered radio is easy to dismiss because it does not usually generate the kind of ratings headlines programmers obsess over, but stations like KKNW create little pockets of local broadcasting that do not exist anywhere else. When that format disappears, so do some of those microphones.
At the same time, I understand what Hubbard sees.
Music is simpler to position.
Classic Country has demonstrated demand.
Hank has already spent more than two years establishing the lane.
Hubbard already owns the modern Country brand in the same building.
And 1150 gives the company a terrestrial place to extend something it had already created digitally on KPNW-HD2.
That is a pretty efficient move.
The bigger question is what Hubbard does with it now.
If Bull Classics becomes nothing more than a jukebox of records everybody already knows, Hank has the much better FM signal and an existing head start.
That makes the local execution incredibly important.
Seattle Classic Country should sound like Seattle Classic Country.
There are enough people around this market who actually remember the KMPS era.
Use them.
There are people who remember Ichabod Caine.
There are people who remember Tall Paul.
There are people who remember Young Country.
There are people who bought the records when Shania, Brooks & Dunn, Alan Jackson and Garth Brooks were current artists instead of “classics.”
Those memories are valuable.
Turn them into radio.
And do not forget where this station lives.
Classic Country in Western Washington should be able to show up at Enumclaw.
At the King County Fair.
At the rodeo.
At local Country concerts.
At the places where the lifestyle surrounding the music still exists.
Hank is already doing exactly that. The station has been visible at events such as the King County Fair and its Rough Stock Rodeo, building a local environment around the music instead of simply throwing records into automation.
That is the competition.
Not just the songs.
The connection.
There is also something fascinating about Hubbard using one Country brand to protect another.
The company has done this elsewhere. In Cincinnati, Hubbard operates a heritage Country station alongside a complementary Country brand specifically designed to occupy a different lane. Hubbard’s own corporate material describes that second station as a format intended to complement its primary Country property.
That is essentially what Bull Classics can become in Seattle.
A shield.
A flank.
A second doorway into the same Country audience.
The strategy makes even more sense when you remember how volatile 98.9 itself has been.
Hubbard originally launched The Bull years ago, left Country for Adult Alternative, then came back to Country in 2024. Now the company appears much more committed to owning a larger part of the Country audience rather than merely operating one station inside it.
Bull Classics makes that statement pretty clearly.
And now Lotus has something new to deal with.
Hank no longer owns the gold-based Country lane by itself.
That does not automatically mean the audience splits evenly. FM still matters. Branding matters. Personality matters. Marketing matters. The existing listener habit matters.
But somebody just moved another chess piece onto the board.
For radio geeks, this is where it gets interesting.
Because Seattle has never really been a casual Country market.
When Country works here, it can work enormously well.
KMPS proved that for decades.
The Wolf proved it again.
Hank saw enough opportunity to blow up a 30-year AC brand for it.
Hubbard saw enough opportunity to bring The Bull back after walking away from Country.
Now Hubbard sees enough room to put the classics on 1150.
That is not random.
There is an audience here.
The fight is over who understands it best.
I also love the irony that an AM frequency is back playing music in 2026.
Everybody keeps holding funerals for AM radio, and somewhere in Seattle, 1150 just started playing Alan Jackson.
That feels appropriately stubborn.
Maybe that is what radio needs sometimes.
Not another panel discussing whether people still care about AM.
Put something on the damn frequency and give them a reason to care.
Bull Classics now has that opportunity.
Hank has the advantage of an established Classic Country identity, an FM signal and people with genuine Seattle Country history.
Hubbard has the advantage of two Country brands under one roof, an existing contemporary station to promote from and a huge catalog of music listeners already know by heart.
And Seattle gets another Country war.
Honestly, that feels pretty familiar.
George Strait is back in the fight.
Garth is back in the fight.
Reba is back in the fight.
Alan is back in the fight.
And twenty-five years after Seattle radio was already experimenting with contemporary Country on one station and Classic Country on another, somebody has pulled the old playbook off the shelf and decided it might still work.
The technology changed.
The companies changed.
The call letters changed.
The records did not.
Now turn the damn radio up.
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