The Bee moves down the dial

Radio station KWJB has moved its FM frequency to 95.1, station officials announced last week.

KWJB, called The Bee, has its studios in Canton and is the only commercial broadcast station located in Van Zandt County.

“The success of the Bee has enabled it to expand its signal area from Terrell to Tyler and Athens to Mineola. In order to increase our listening area we moved from 95.7 to the 95.1 FM frequency,” said John Butler of Butler7media, the owner of the station. “Based on encouraging and positive comments from listeners, we felt good about making this significant investment to better serve our growing followers of The Bee in East Texas.”

Butler said the purpose of the station “is to bring a smile to our listener’s faces, as we provide daily updates on local events, news, live city council meetings, local church services, high school sports and play the greatest hits from rock to country.”
“We have a lot of fun broadcasting live play-by-play East Texas high school football, basketball and other sport events on THE BEE” said T.A. Hale, one of The Bee’s Buzz Brothers sports broadcasters. “It is the official sports station of VZC.”

Hale, along with Shawn Stewart, Mike Malouf and producer Kyle Travis, have gained a large following as The Bee sportscast team. In addition to the games, they host The Bee Sports Show at 6:30 p.m. on Mondays during the seasons.

CISD Superintendent Jay Tullos said “We appreciate our partnership with KWJB radio and are excited The Bee, now on 95.1 FM, will have an even larger audience as they broadcast the high school games and school reports.”

School superintendents from the major districts in the county give school updates each week on The Bee, Butler said.

“We are proud to have KWJB broadcasting from Canton,” said Mayor Lou Ann Everett, who is also the public service director of KWJB. “It is a true asset to all citizens of VZC for public service announcements and emergency alerts, as well as a fun station to listen to. We are excited The Bee has increased its listening area from Terrell to Tyler broadcasting from studios in Canton.”

“Our goal is to be a friend in your car and home, keeping you connected,” Butler said., “Recent Nielsen data shows 93 percent of adults listen to the radio each week as compared to 87 percent who watch TV, a substantive difference, according to a report in Forbes magazine.”

Broadcaster Mike Newby, a retired high school football coach, delivers sports and news on the half hour every day on KWJB. Newby said he’s happy to be part of radio team.

“It is a true joy to be part of THE BEE broadcast team,” he said. “I am able to bring local stories to the attention of listeners and remind them to read more about the stories in the Van Zandt newspapers.” The coverage are expansion and move to the 95.1 frequency was overseen by a nationally respected broadcast engineer, Jack Sellmeyer, P.E.

Sellmeyer was the first and only engineer to date awarded the George Marti Award for Engineering Excellence by the Texas Association of Broadcasters in 2014. The National Association of Broadcasters honored Sellmeyer with their Radio Engineering Achievement Award in 2009 for a lifetime of work.

The Bee will continue on its sister station 1510 AM, ETC channel 3 TV, streaming at www.KWJB.com and on the free KJWB phone ap available from iTunes and GooglePlay.

“There have been many technological challenges,” Butler said. “When I started in radio and television in my high school days, I cued up records on a turntable and when a button was pushed, I had to push it at the right time. Now radio and TV stations use automation, which both simplifies and complicates the process. But serving people via broadcasting still excites me as much as it did when I first started in high school. I enjoy being a friend to the listener over their radio. Hopefully they occasionally find my weird twists on current events humorous and it lightens their day with a smile. When that happens, it makes me smile.”