Iowa Politics with Jeff Stein -- Thu. Sep. 17, 2026

When KSO went country, I'm Jeff Stein with today's Iowa Politics Report.

If you live near Des Moines in the 1960s and 1970s, you know there were two giant radio stations vying for the top 40 music audience.

KIOA

and KSO.

It was a great rivalry and woe upon the person who switched sides.

You were either Team 940 or Team 1460.

But as FM became more popular, there were not enough AM pop music listeners to go around.

So new management at KSO decided to change format from playing top 40 to country.

Thousands of teenagers in Central Iowa went to bed one night and awoke the next morning to strange sounds coming from their transistor radios.

KSO had gone country, and many who remember the time still look like they are in pain when they think of it, although the station did do rather well with that format for years.

We did something similar with one of our stations here.

When I started here 12 years ago,

AM 1330 aired sports talk from ESPN.

Then one day, new management decided to change the format to top 40, calling it the party.

That did not sit well with the sports fans.

Then a few years later, different management decided to make another change, this time to classic country.

The party was over, literally, and a guy named Hank took over.

And while unhappy listeners of the old format made their feelings known, the data shows more folks are listening now than before.

And it's totally understandable.

A radio station and the voices that come from within it are like friends you invite into your home or car.

So it's no wonder you object when someone you didn't invite drops by when you were expecting someone quite different.

But radio stations are businesses, like any other, and new owners get to make changes.

They might seem drastic to a listener, a shock in some cases, like when KSO went country, but it's always been this way, and likely always will, even here.

And that's the Iowa Politics Report for Thursday, September 17.

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at Iowa Politics.

I'm Jeff Stein on News Talk 1540, KXEL.