KAUT-FM

KAUT-FM (93.3 FM) is a commercial radio station in Flagstaff, Arizona and is owned by iHeartMedia. Its studios are located in the iHeartMedia Flagstaff Towne Centre building at 670 Campus Heights St, and its transmitters are located at the former building housing Taft American Radiocasters' HQ at Avocet Ave. KAUT-FM carries an adult hits format branded as "Austin FM", which serves as a rival to Sparknet's Jack FM service.

Austin functions similar to Jack, who is the mascot for all Jack FM stations. However, Austin's lines are created using a realistic text to speech program known internally as "Clear Channel's Computerized Audio Voice Emulator" or CAVE for short.

As KPHF-FM
On February 4, 1965, KAUT-FM launched as KPHF-FM. When it launched, it was owned by the Meredith Corporation who also owned sister stations, KPHF-AM and KPHF-TV. Initially when it launched it served as a simulcast of KPHF-AM, with both stations carrying the CBS radio network. But by 1971, the station would split off from its simulcast and became a Top 40 station. In 1973, Meredith would sell its Flagstaff based assets to Koplar Communications. Both KPHF-AM and KPHF-FM are the only radio stations owned by Koplar.

93 Taffy
In 1974, a year after Koplar purchased the station from Meredith, the station went under a major rebrand. The station changed its call-letters to KTAF, and its branding to 93 Taffy. Despite those, the station retained its Top 40 format. Around the exact same time, the station aired ads featuring their logo at the time (a literal taffy bar in red candy packaging with the text 93 Taffy put in a bold font), with most of the ads ending on the taffy bar opening to revealing a red taffy bar followed by the bar getting a bite. These ads are still synonymous with the station to this day and in fact during the 2005 format change, physical versions of the 93 Taffy bar were sold.

In 1978, Koplar would sell both KKNX (the former KPHF-AM) and KTAF to an independent consortium owned by Taft Broadcasting, American Media (later known as Chancellor Broadcasting) as well as a bunch of local Flagstaff based companies known as Taft/American Radiocasters.

The Ozone
Following heavy competition with then-recent Top 40 station KRIT-FM in 1986, the station started to fall in the ratings and as such on April 19, 1988, KTAF would abandoned its Top 40 format and switched to an active rock format. The station would rebranded to KOOO with its branding being "The Ozone 93.3", the station's call-letters are in-fact based on the branding (the chemical formula of ozone gas is O3 or triple O).

In 1996, Chancellor Inc. (formerly American Media) took over majority control over the station and in 1999 merged with Capstar to form AMFM. Later in 2000, AMFM would merge into Clear Channel.

Expanding music catalogue
In order to boost ratings even higher, the station would increase its music lineup throughout 1998 and by April 19th, 1999, the station would fully transition into an all genre rock format. The station change its call-letters to KXTR-FM and its branding to "Extra Rock 93.3".

However, the station started to plummet down on ratings shortly after switching to an all genre rock format which started to happen 2002 and continued to get worse by 2004.

The Austin and return to glory
In response to extremely low ratings, KXTR-FM announced another swap and it was up to viewers to decide what format the station would switch to. A poll was made online by the station's staff for this reason. The adult hits format was the major winner and the station planned to switch by October 4th, 2005. On October 3, 2005, KXTR-FM aired its final batch of songs with all revolved around saying goodbye and or had themes of change and on October 4, 2005 at around 8:30 am, the station became KAUT-FM, with an adult hits and branded 93.3 Austin FM. The first song to air on Austin 93.3 was "Eye of the Tiger" by Survivor. Immediately after the switch, the station regained its audience and has stayed as one of the top ranking stations in Flagstaff.

Alongside the launch of 93.3 Austin FM was also the creation of the station's mascot Austin. Although Clear Channel wanted a professional voice actor to voice Austin, mainly Steve Blum, Clear Channel cancelled the idea because Steve Blum was working on other projects, so the company collaborated with Microsoft to create a text to speech program that replicated a human voice. The software was called Clear Channel's Computerized Audio Voice Emulator, or CAVE for short, and it was mostly used for this station in particular. However, it was used on some other Clear Channel stations that carried the adult hits format.