Tom Wood Back on Air at New Classic Hits Station

Little Rock has a new Classic Hits Radio station, and a very familiar name is back on the air.

The station, Big 94.9 FM, launched Dec. 28 after two months of playing Christmas music, and the familiar name is Tom Wood.

Many will remember Wood from his days on Magic 105, a one-time popular Little Rock station.

Big 94.9 calls itself Little Rock’s Greatest Hits. The station, technically KHKN-FM, had been TOM FM since 2008. It is owned by iHeart Media.

Ron Collar, iHeart Media’s Little Rock Market president, calls the change from TOM-FM to Big 94.9 more of musical adjustment and a re-branding than a complete format change.

TOM-FM was a version of a popular trend format called “Jack” in many other cities. This refers to the station playing what Collar called a “wide, wide” variety of music, and it had no disc jockeys or personalities. Wood was the music director for the station.

Collar said when it first launched, the playlist might include singers as varied as Frank Sinatra and Willie Nelson. Over the years, Collar said, “we narrowed down the music, and this is really more of an adjustment and re-branding” from the TOM FM days.

Classic Hits is designed to have a greater appeal to female listeners than Classic Rock, said Collar.

Ironically, Collar was at one time the general manager of Little Rock’s Classic Rock station, KKPT, known as The Point 94.1. Collar says Classic Rock tends to appeal more to men.

A one-hour sample one afternoon on Big 94.9 included music from Elton John, Madonna, Billy Joel, Journey, Pat Benatar, Kansas, Steve Miller and Cheap Trick. Collar said almost all the music comes from the 1970s and ’80s.

Collar said Wood remains the music director of the station, and is heard on-air from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. weekdays. Jeff Cage is program director.