Brian Pierce and Kellie Michaels have come home.

The married couple are bringing their popular morning country music radio show back to Springfield after spending eight years in Wichita, Kansas. Mid-West Family Broadcasting is using the "Brian and Kellie" show to launch a new country music station, WUSW-FM 92.7, which will be a mix of hits from today's most popular acts as well as country superstars like Garth Brooks and Kenny Chesney.

"We're pleased to provide that station to this market's enthusiastic fans," said Mark Birtch, general manager for Mid-West Family Broadcasting. "And with Brian and Kellie in the morning, we will not only give them the music, but we will connect them to their favorite artists and to the wide variety of events and activities here in Springfield."

Pierce and Michaels both call Springfield home despite having spent a lot of time in bigger markets. The two started the "Brian and Kellie Mornings" show in 1991 on WNNS-FM 98.7 in Springfield.

"The initial response was really, really, really big right from the get-go," Pierce said. "It was over the top."

While they were here, they made many friends and met many of their fans, Pierce said, adding that over the years, he and his wife had shaken hands with just about everyone in their radio audience from different functions or just in the grocery store or anywhere else around town.

Then they abruptly left, taking their show to KDFI in Kansas. But now the pair is back.

"We did not leave and think, 'Gosh, we don't like those people,'" Michaels said. "We had so many friends back here. And the management (at Mid-West Family Broadcasting) is now a really good group, and we feel really comfortable coming back here."

'Radio is an art'

Pierce describes their morning show as a "lifestyle show that is plugged into the moment."

"Radio today is so generic. It's so homogenized; it's so watered down. ... It's the state of the business," he said. "They're mired in execution and not in art. Radio is an art."

The art for Pierce and Michaels is about connecting with their audiences emotionally.

"Brian and I, we really live our lives out on the radio," Michaels said. "We're married … and it does allow us to have a lot of connection in our lives and other people's lives."

Listeners in Springfield and in Kansas connected with the show, so much so that the pair won a Country Music Award in 2011. They were named broadcast personalities of the year by the Country Music Association.

They have received multiple other CMA and Academy of Country Music awards.

Building a new station

Birtch said Mid-West Family Broadcasting is excited to bring the couple back and believes the local audience is equally excited to have them back.

And with the "Brian and Kellie" show, it allowed the company to start a country music station to tap into one of Springfield's biggest markets.

"Springfield is a huge country market, but has been looking for a station that loves and respects not only new country, but also the hits that put the format on the map," Birtch said in a news release.

In order to make room for the new country station, something had to be bumped off the dial. For Mid-West Family Broadcasting, it meant moving Alice, previously WLCE-FM 97.7, to an entirely streaming format. It was bumped to make room for WQLZ, a hard rock station that had been at 92.7.

Alice had been on 97.7 for seven years and played indie and alternative music. Birtch described it as a niche market that was hard to support in a town like Springfield.

"From a business perspective, in a market this size without a major university, it was hard to support," he said.

Alice FM, which can be found at alice.fm, was taken solely online Aug. 24.

The reaction from its audience was initially disappointing, Birtch said, but that kind of music generally attracts a more progressive audience, and Springfield isn't the most progressive of towns.

"When you have something that is somewhat progressive, people that are looking for that gravitate towards that," he said. "And unfortunately, when you take that away from them, they feel like we're taking a step back."

Birtch explained the move to the people who contacted him, and he said they weren't happy, but they understood that it was purely a business decision. And besides, he said, Alice FM's audience tends to be a younger demographic, and a streaming format is easily accessible for them.

Mid-West Family Broadcasting plans on promoting the online streaming in different ways, Birtch said.

"We're going to be doing additional Facebook postings and online postings on all of our websites, cross-promoting it on our stations," he said.

New start

Meanwhile, Pierce and Michaels have high hopes for rebuilding their audience quickly, and they're confident they will be able to connect to a new group of listeners.

Pierce said one advantage they have is a familiarity in Springfield and a core group of listeners who followed them eight years ago.

"People are going to have to reacquaint themselves," he said. "It's a process. It's a building process."

But they both say they're happy to be back.

"We're excited about reconnecting with listeners," Michaels said. "We're hoping that fans of our show will seek us out."
