Tune in to the Searcy-based classic rock radio station Cool 104.7 Arkansas KFI-FM any time, day or night, and you’ll hear the voice of its primary DJ, Hot Rod Todd Scott, sharing the same “Holy Cow!” tone of excitement as legendary Chicago Cubs announcer Harry Caray. He bursts with enthusiasm, whether serving as host of the station’s “Burgers, Pies & Fries Rock and Roll Trivia” contest during his weekday 6 a.m. – 10 a.m. morning show, in pre-taped segments announcing the weather or promoting the never-ending array of Central Arkansas community and entertainment events.
Lower on the dial, at KLRG 94.5FM in Little Rock, local legend Tom Wood is one of several DJs who helped create the 13-station network Arkansas Rocks. The team uses decades of experience to run shows free from corporate interference and forms an eclectic deep-cuts playlist that has proven popular with classic rock aficionados. Together, the two DJs are prime examples of how veteran voices have formed lasting bonds with listeners amid an ever-changing media landscape. For both men, radio has been a lifelong passion.
Scott fell in love with radio while listening to the KMOX station during his formative years in St. Louis. He grew up listening over his mother’s “old tube radio” as he ate breakfast each day, and relied on the station’s timed segments to keep himself on schedule.
“We didn’t need a clock, because we knew exactly what time each segment aired,” Scott recalled. “When the morning march played, it was time to brush my teeth and by the time the news sounder hit at 7 a.m., I had better be out the door to catch the school bus. On the bus, the kids all chipped in to buy a used car stereo and some speakers, which some of the older boys installed. The driver was nice enough to put in some earplugs and let us rock out with the radio full blast.”
But it was while watching the sitcom WKRP in Cincinnati, about the shenanigans at a fictional radio station, that Scott found his real inspiration in the show’s wild deejay, Dr. Johnny Fever. From that fifth-grade moment on, Scott knew what he would be when he grew up, and started creating his own shows at home. He used matching phonographs, belonging to himself and his brother, to play Beatles records, and would record his show complete with ad-libbed commercials on a handheld cassette player.
Two months after Scott moved to Arkansas for college, he walked into a radio station in downtown Searcy and asked for a job. He scored one immediately, starting out doing the afternoon drive show. Since then, he’s hosted shows on stations in Little Rock, Blytheville, Heber Springs, Batesville and beyond, gleaning valuable insights from the older DJs with whom he worked.
“The folks that had influence were guys I usually worked with. Even as a really young guy, there might be a guy there who worked in radio since the early ‘30s,” Scott said. “I just sat with them at the station or in coffee shops, absorbing all that these guys told me. I hung out at the radio station every waking hour, even when I was off the clock. Unfortunately, they have passed on, and left me as ‘the old guy’ now.”
While he’s been up and down the radio dial since 1985, Scott earned his 15 minutes of fame for an entirely different kind of on-air experience. Amid the tornadoes that devastated Beebe and surrounding communities in 1999, Scott (then on KABK-FM 97.7) found himself chasing the storms for live coverage and wound up being the top reporter of any stripe covering the tragedies.
Scott was trapped in Beebe for three days and nights after the city went into lockdown to foil looters. Meeting with everyone from homeowners, whose property was destroyed, to city council members and officials from FEMA, Scott had to be inventive to stay on the air.
“I was the only media in town since many radio and TV stations were knocked off the air,” he recalled. “I managed to do my reporting using a cellphone, going out to my van to charge it because there was no electricity in town. Residents were listening through their car radios or battery-powered ones, and CNN and other networks were monitoring my station and feeding it across the phone lines to the studio and across America. I didn’t think of the significance of it at the time.”
Scott joined KFLI when it hit the airwaves 20 years ago, and has seen the industry devolve from highly diverse playlists, to a blander and more limited array of songs under the direction of corporate radio and faceless consultants in big cities. He takes immense pride in Cool 104.7 maintaining its own flavor, reflecting the Arkansas audience by playing acts like Black Oak Arkansas, rather than trying to sound like thousands of other stations nationwide.
The frequent live remote broadcasts Scott performs throughout Central Arkansas are his favorite part of the job, and the opportunities to meet people at various events have increased in the past two years, since fellow radio veteran Bob Connell bought the station. The biggest challenge Scott faces is the same one that countless stations face – people listening to online radio stations or music playlists on their phones. But Scott also has to deal with the addition of multitasking that many DJs have learned to deal with, as station staff sizes have shrunk since the 1980s.
“I’m on from 6 a.m. to 1 p.m. every day, and am here until 2, and there’s always something different to handle each day,” Scott explained. “35 years ago, I just came and played records and maybe read the news. Now, I’m doing lots of things around here, because in between commercial breaks I might have to run down the hall and record a commercial or do an interview.
“A lot of us take the job home with us too, doing a little home broadcasting like the weather report, and the weekend stuff is mostly voice-tracked in advance. It’s not like it was 35 years ago when you were live and had different people in here around the clock. But radio is my job and it’s also my number one hobby. It’s great combining my passion with a paycheck!”
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Meanwhile, it’s perfectly fitting for Tom Wood that one of his favorite things to do at Arkansas Rocks is host the “Magical Mystery Tour” on Friday nights. The one-hour show, from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m., finds him spinning a mix of the Beatles’ biggest hits and deep album tracks, while sharing surprising facts and stories about the band that fascinate listeners.
The show also brings him full circle to growing up in the 1960s and hearing DJs bring The Beatles to the airwaves in his suburban Chicago home.
“It was listening to WLS-AM 890 in Chicago that made me first take interest in radio,” recalled Wood, who hosts the 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. shift on the network. “The Beatles explosion was going on in those years and I loved the music and thought that the DJs just had this way of making the music even more special to me.
“After I went to college at Southern Illinois University, I won a contest on a local radio station in Carbondale. I went in to pick up my prize – it was the first time I’d ever seen a radio station– and I just fell in love with it. I thought it was the most exciting thing I’d ever seen; it was like seeing Oz. I changed my major that day from journalism to broadcasting and have loved it ever since.”
Arkansas Rocks is the third station that Wood, 69, has helped launch in the state. He was working at a station in Peoria, Illinois, when the owner bought the Little Rock radio station that would eventually become KMJX-FM 105.1, Magic 105. He asked Wood to come down and help start the rock powerhouse in 1979. Taking a leap of faith with his wife, Wood made the move, and teamed with Gordon Heiges and Dick Booth to pick the format and hire staff.
“When we started off, we weren’t classic rock because there weren’t any classic rock stations,” he explained. “We were rock – old stuff and new stuff – but as the years went by, we slowly began to lose interest in the new music, focused on the classics, and slowly morphed into a full classic rock station. A big part of our format was the personalities, and Tommy Smith was the number one morning show in the market.”
But after nearly three decades of deejaying for the station, Wood parted ways with Magic 105 in 2008. Its current owners, iHeart Radio, changed the station’s format to country music and moved Wood to a new station built around him, called TOM-FM. That station lasted for a couple of years, before Wood became public affairs director for iHeart’s Little Rock stations. Then, in 2018, he was invited to be part of the team that launched Arkansas Rocks.
The idea of launching a station that would be independently owned ran counter to the prevailing industry trends, in which corporations dominate the Arkansas landscape. Wood notes that iHeart Radio owns five stations, Cumulus has seven and The Signal owns three in the state. The idea of being locally owned was “just so important to the product,” opening the doors to unique programming.
Aside from “Magical Mystery Tour,” the network is also home to the latest incarnation of “Beaker Street,” Clyde Clifford’s innovative mix of music, commentary and spacey sounds that has bounced around the Little Rock dial since its inception in 1967 on KAAY-AM 1890. Its historic status as the first underground music program broadcast regularly on a commercial AM radio station in the Central US makes it another key part of the vibe.
The network’s array of locations is made clear at the top of every hour, when FCC requirements make Arkansas Rocks play a list of its call letters statewide. For Wood, the most challenging part of helping run the network is keeping track of the technical facilities for 13 stations.
“You’ve constantly got a weather situation in Mountain Home or an internet connection lost in Malvern. Not a day goes by without some kind of alert on my phone,” said Wood, who’s been married 46 years and has two sons, including Los Angeles Times pop music critic Mikael Wood.
Ultimately, Wood considers the greatest reward in working with Arkansas Rocks to be in the feedback the team receives. The DJs all make their station email addresses public in the hopes of hearing from listeners about their opinions, which are filled with fan notes. Seeing that response gives Wood true joy, that he carries both on-air and off.
“I’d love someone from New York or LA who’s visiting Little Rock to hear us and go, ‘Wow, this is so much like the ‘70s and ‘80s were – when guys played music they want to play and played requests, talking to listeners, and it’s so much more organic,” Wood said.
“This station is so much more like what Central Arkansas feels like. I’ve been here long enough that I can feel the vibe. I know what’s important to people and what music has lasted the test of time. And we’ve got no one telling us not to play it – so play it! Spin it!”
