Selma has a brand new radio station for country. Kix Country on 101.5, will now be home to Selma’s country station and local listeners will now be able to enjoy the same programs in an HD format.

Scott Alexander and his son Paul Alexander owns the local family business Scott Communications, Inc, which was started 40 years ago. Their local business now runs and operates nine stations total — five of them in Selma including the two new HD stations and an AM station. Kix Country is the sister station and housed under the same roof as WJAM 96.3 and WALX ALEX FM on 100.9.

“We want this to be Selma’s hometown station,” Paul Alexander said about the new Kix Country 101.5, which will be involved with the community by doing things like broadcasting Friday night football games for the Morgan Academy Senators. “People ask us why we don’t pick up and move [our station] to Montgomery because we have an FM station there, but we tell them Selma is our hometown and we are here to stay.”

Paul explained there was such a void in the local market for a country station they heard, “an outcry from people in the community,” asking them to start one. He said they got much of the feedback on Facebook and more than 10 calls a day asking sometimes.

“We didn’t want to pull the rug out from under our listeners on the other stations, so we purchased the 101.5 frequency from a company in Idaho,” Paul said. “We launched the station two weeks ago and we had no idea the reaction would be this positive — we didn’t know it would be this big.”

The company also created another avenue for local listeners by broadcasting in high definition.

HD radio has a high sound quality than the traditional analog stations. In addition this new broadcasting format provides a way for radio stations to simultaneously broadcast several programs using just one radio station.

WALX ALEX FM is available as HD1 while Kix Country is available as HD2 and both are found using the same analog signal on 100.9. Listeners, Scott said, must purchase an HD radio for their car or home to be able to tune in on the HD channels. They have partnered with the local company Automotive Excitement on Highland Avenue to provide HD radio in cars for those that want to experience it.