Radio Days: Hot Springs Village station brings fun, family together on the airwaves
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An Arkansas radio station is a big hit with audiences thanks to its home-spun style of radio led by a family who have spent generations in the business and behind the microphone.
HOT SPRINGS VILLAGE, Ark. – Half radio, half work and part live sitcom with lots of laughs is the best way to describe a day at 92.9 KVRE.
Its flow of live shows and music and busy front office lets you know it behaves as a well-oiled machine.
Step inside the Hot Springs Village radio station and you will see a singing mail lady, the gentlemen dropping in weekly to offer hugs or the man from up the road handing out beef sticks.
At every turn you’ll find the ladies in the office laughing or conspiring to make someone smile. Just about then, you begin to realize the place is one sharp turn away from becoming a runaway school bus, full of kids who are enjoying the ride.
All the while the bus driver, station owner Tom Nichols, keeps a steady hand on the wheel. Nearby in one of the on-air production booths, an ageless smooth-as-silk voice rolls out a familiar greeting.
“Good morning where are you calling from?” is how Tom answers every call into his daily morning show, “Ask Your Neighbor,” where listeners call in to ask each other anything from who has moving boxes, if anyone needs a golf cart wheel, where’s the best place for this or that or what is the best horse to bet on in the next race at Oaklawn.
As station owner, Tom bobs and weaves with it as it comes on air and off. That flexibility is what has given him staying power in the radio business for the last 65 years, a milestone recently noted by Congressmen Bruce Westerman and French Hill on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives in Washington D.C.
“(It was) an honor of a lifetime, a thrill to think going back to a kid who came out of the speech class in Hot Springs High School in 1958 to go to a radio station KFWC and be on the air,” he said.
From that day in 1958, that kid moved up and down the dial of the airways in Arkansas. Tom remembers most, if not all, of his stops.
“Stuttgart, Arkansas – KWAK. KBBA in Benton. A station in Pine Bluff, KADL. A 5000-watt country station, KFOY-TV, KBOO became KZNG,” he recalls, listing off call letters like old friends.
There were a lot of changes, but not always by his choice. Tom said many stations he was working at ran into financial issues and he would wind up let go, or the station would go off the air and close.
The young broadcaster had a game plan to keep revenue coming in and keep himself on the air.
“I’d get up at 4″o’clock in the morning, do a couple hours in the morning and sell the rest of the time,” he explained.
People liked listening to him and buying airtime from him. In 1966 at 25 years old, he was a hit, climbing the charts. He says his hard work got noticed.
“Promoted me as general manager,” he remembered of the move. “I was the youngest general manager in the state at the time.”
Tom and his wife Polly, who is an on-air and business partner, kept that focus, and when an investor suggested he start his own station, they were more than ready.
“In 1980 we put KWXI-AM on the air at 2500 watts,” he said. “We covered a third of Arkansas, northeastern Texas, southeastern Oklahoma.”
His broadcast footprint was growing and about to get bigger.
“We did that for a few years, then we had the opportunity to put KVRE on the air. And that’s where we are today, but it was a long process,” Tom said.
Tom, Polly and the rest of the crew made the station a staple, offering everything from rock to county to middle of the road to oldies to good old-fashioned chew-the-fat request radio.
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As good as he is at the business of radio, reaching out through the radio is his first love.
“I’m still an announcer, that was my goal. I love the interaction with our audience,” Tom said. “I like to say we have a radio family here, not only at the station but our listeners are part of our radio family. For some of them, especially the seniors we are the only family they have, we are a companion. We take that very seriously.”
Back to the runaway bus. Each morning at 6 a.m., things get rolling.
“Hey, gang. Tracey Simpson the morning guy,” is how Tracey Simpson signs the station on each morning. The veteran DJ has a front-row seat to all of it.
“They are crazy here. Yeah, we are the WKRP of Hot Springs and the surrounding area,” Simpson said with a huge easy-going smile.
He had been working in Los Angeles and then Dallas but came home to slow down, or so he thought.
“Trying to do a little retiring, more fishing and hunting,” Simpson said of his original plan. “I got a call from the radio station here and found a family at KVRE.”
Scotty Mack is the mid-morning man along with Keena Taylor. Scotty’s first job out of high school put him in Vietnam, it was almost his last.
“I was in artillery, we got overrun the last night I was there. That was kind of scary,” he recalled.
Mack is one of two who survived the battle. He was awarded the Purple Heart and Bronze Star, and when he got back home, he went to school.
“Radio School, George Kline, Elvis’ best friend, was my teacher,” he said proudly, adding that he has been working for or with Tom ever since.
Among the other cast of characters, Tom’s most treasured is his daughter Alice, who stepped up when health reasons made her mom Polly step down as station manager. That change of roles was when Tom, and his daughter, would find out if she had been paying attention.
“It was like bam! My dad was like, ‘You’re the general manager,’ I was like, ‘Oh. Oh!’” Alice said.
She now helps make sure the well-oiled machine stays fueled up and fun.
“We are like a dysfunctional family, and it works, and it all works,” Alice explained.
When the work is done, Tom goes from being comfortable behind a microphone to finding comfort in his barn with his horses.
“(I’m) a cowboy at heart,” he said. “I’ve had horses for 42 years. You learn some things, but you can never learn it all. Always something new, like the radio business.”
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A recent something new is partnering with iHeartRadio. KVRE had already gone from a local broadcast signal to worldwide streaming at KVRE.com, but now the station has been added to the huge network and its apps. The move makes sense because everyone at KVRE is full of heart and hard work.
WEB EXTRA: Take an extended look inside the KVRE family
So next time you get the chance, dial up 92.9 FM and rest your ears for a few hours, and if you call in, tell the gang I said hello.
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