mack sanders - Inducted 2005

Mack Sanders was a disc jockey, bandleader, singer and station owner. He began his Country career in 1938 as a radio personality in Birmingham, Alabama. By 1951, he was a Country disc jockey at KFH in Wichita, Kansas. He then moved across town to KFBI, where his "Mack and The Ranch Boys" did a noontime broadcast, and where he later hosted his own music show on KTHV-TV. In 1958 he and business partner Webb Pierce obtained a license to put KSIR on the air, and it became Wichita's first full time Country station. Their Pier-San Broadcasting then purchased KOOO in Omaha, Nebraska. He eventually created a radio empire that included stations in nine markets, including Nashville. In 1978, He sold what was then Great American Broadcasting and began buying stations again. By 1992 he had moved to Hot Springs, Arkansas, where he did a radio show on his station until his death in 2003. His widow Sherry Bryce Sanders accepted when Mack Sanders was inducted into the Country Radio Hall of Fame in 2005.