101.7 flipping - anyone rolling?

[Scott Fybush]

On 6/16/2014 4:05 PM, Bill O'Neill wrote:
> The Bull? Really? What I'd pay for secret audio of that decision meeting
> that gave birth to that bon mot.
>
> Bill O'Neill

The name itself seems pretty unremarkable to me. There's certainly 
plenty of association between bulls and country music - rodeos, cowboys, 
mechanical bulls at country and western bars, and so on. It's a brand 
Clear Channel has used with considerable success on long-running country 
stations in other markets: KSD (93.7) in St. Louis and WBUL (98.1) in 
Lexington, Kentucky come immediately to mind as Clear Channel "Bull" FM 
stations that have thrived with the brand for a decade or longer. Other 
more recent Clear Channel Bulls include Atlanta, Birmingham, Las Vegas, 
Wichita and Defiance, Ohio.

Like "Kiss," it's a brand that has been around long enough that its use 
with country radio predated Clear Channel in other markets. I'm not sure 
if there's still a Bull in Reno, for instance, but there was a KBUL 
doing country there as far back as the early 1990s under a different 
owner. (A quick check shows KBUL is still doing country there on 98.1, 
and is in fact now owned by Clear Channel.)

There's a CBS Bull in Houston (KILT-FM 100.3), a prominent Bull in 
Portland, Oregon (KUPL 98.7), and so on.

I know of at least one Canadian "Bull," too, in Wingham, Ontario (I 
think it's flipped to something else since.)

It is, in any event, a brand that's well established in Clear Channel's 
stable, so there probably wasn't much of a meeting or decision process 
that led to it appearing on 101.7, any more than there would be if CC 
launched a new top-40 somewhere and named it "Kiss" or "Now," or a new 
talker as "The Patriot."