Entravision Communications, the parent company of KNTY (101.9 FM), flipped the long-time country station to a Spanish-language format on Monday, ending more than a decade of broadcasting country music to the Sacramento metropolitan area.
The format flip also affected sister-station KCVR-FM (98.9) in Modesto just four months after it adopted “The Wolf” branding. Both KNTY and KCVR are simulcasting a Spanish-language sister-station out of Marysville.
News of the impending format flip was first hinted when long-time Wolf broadcasters Kimberly “Kimmy” Kay and Tracy Leighann Brimmer posted notes to Facebook saying goodbye to listeners and thanking them for tuning in. Those notes were first reported Monday by the radio trade publication All Access.
The format flips follow a trend for Entravision in consolidating their radio portfolio toward Spanish-language offerings. The Santa Monica-based company operates dozens of radio stations across the country, most of them broadcasting Spanish music and talk programming. The company also owns a number of Univision and Unimas affiliates in small- to mid-sized television markets.
For Sacramento country music fans, options on the dial have become somewhat limited between top-rated station KNCI (105.1 FM), owned by Entercom, and a HD radio substation of iHeartMedia’s KYRV (93.7 FM) branded as “The Bull.” KYRV-HD2 also broadcasts on low-power translator K296GB (107.1 FM), but that signal is only available in the immediate Sacramento area.
