Mike Huckabee
Bluff City Radio LLC, the chain of stations owned by Paul Coates and former Gov. Mike Huckabee, has reached a deal for PB Radio LLC to operate its four properties in Jefferson County.
PB Radio, owned by Mike and Alpha Horne, will take over KTPB of Altheimer, KHUC and KPBA of Pine Bluff, and KTRN of White Hall under the terms of the local management deal, effective April 1.
No financial details of the arrangement were made public.
Mike Horne has been acting as manager of the four stations since December 2016, he told Arkansas Business, and is confident that his experience in managing and owning radio stations in Arkansas and beyond will pay off in an improving Pine Bluff economy.
“My good friend Paul Coates brought me down here to kind of get them out of trouble,” Horne said. “Everybody thinks Pine Bluff is a losing situation, but the town has gotten a bad rap. We’re doing well, and the people are optimistic. There are still problems, but we’ve got a great mayor now [Shirley Washington] and things are looking up.”
Horne, who previously owned stations in Russellville and Searcy, as well as in Oklahoma, Texas and Kansas, said that running the stations under a separate company comes with the option of buying the properties from Bluff City.
“We’re going to play that by ear; we might end up buying, or we might not,” he said.
Before moving to Pine Bluff, Horne was chief operating officer for Crain Media Group, a division of Crain Automotive & Investments. In that capacity, he operated radio stations in Little Rock, Conway, Searcy and Batesville.
He plans no changes at the four stations and plans to continue “producing both excellent programming for the many listeners in South Arkansas and outstanding advertising opportunities for businesses in the area.”
KTPB, known as The Hog, offers country music at 98.1 on the FM dial. KHUC is known as Super Oldies 99.3; KPBA, The Beat, is a hip hop and R&B station; and KTRN, or K-Train, plays hits from the 60s, 70s and 80s.
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