KNIX host Double-L joins Mix 96.9
Lois Lewis — or Double-L as listeners have come to know her — is having a bit of a moment.
A day after the news broke that the effervescent midday host at KNIX-FM (102.5) had just been named the PM drive host at KMXP-FM (Mix 96.9), she woke to a flurry of texts.
Her boss at iHeartMedia, which owns both stations, wanted her to know she’d just been nominated for an Academy of Country Music Award.
“What a week,” Lewis says of waking to the news that she’d been nominated for On-Air Personality in the Major Market category. “I felt like I was on Cloud Nine already, and then I just vaulted to some next-level cloud.”
This isn’t Lewis’s first nomination for a major country radio award.
“I’m gonna turn into the Susan Lucci of these award shows,” she says, with a laugh, referring to the “All My Children” star who won her first and only Daytime Emmy after 19 nominations.
“I have three nominations for the ACMs and three for the (Country Music
Association). But if there were ever a year, I’ve had the best year ratings-wise and connection-wise with my listeners.”
She’s praying to the trophy gods, she says. “Because it would be incredible to deliver that this year for KNIX.”
Lewis will still have a home at KNIX
Lewis isn’t leaving KNIX. She’ll continue to serve as both the country sta
tion’s midday host and its music director. She’s just branching out into another format under the same iHeartMedia banner – a hot adult contemporary station where Lewis has the 3-7 p.m. weekday shift.
“It’s really exciting, because I am a feel-good human,” she says in a voice that clearly gives off major feel-good human vibes.
“The reason I got into radio is to brighten people’s days. I have a lot of energy. I don’t even drink coffee. I just wake up like this and I share that with anyone who needs it. Especially last year, I feel like I was a real help to a lot of people. And that is why I’ve done this job. I could’ve done a lot of other jobs. But there’s a calling to me for radio.”
Linda Little, the region president for iHeartMedia Phoenix, says Lewis is the “perfect fit” for this new opportunity.
“The Mix 96.9 audience will undoubtedly connect with Double-L the minute they hear her infectious energy and engaging style,” she says.
This actually makes three Phoenix stations for Lewis. For the past year, she’s been doing weekends on KESZFM (99.9), an iHeartMedia station whose format is mainstream adult contemporary.
Bring ‘feel-good music’ to the airwaves
When Steve Geofferies, the regional senior vice president of programming for iHeartMedia Phoenix, asked how she would feel about bringing her talents to a different format, Lewis didn’t have to think it over.
“I mean, this is feel-good music from the ‘90s to today,” she says. “I’m 42 years old. I love this music. It was my soundtrack at ASU. I mean, I lived at PV East. Room 711 shout out! And these are the songs I listened to.”
It may be worth noting that Lewis’ go-to music when she isn’t on the air is something else entirely.
“I actually love ‘90s hip hop the very most, which I know might be so polar opposite and just make you go ‘What?!,’” she says.
“But I love P.M. Dawn and Dr. Dre. I listen to a lot of Mix music and country. But since I’m immersed in country all day, I do remove myself from it for a good portion of the day so that I can stay fresh. When I’m walking my dog in the morning, unless I’m listening to my morning show, Tim, Ben and Brooke, I’m probably listening to P.M. Dawn.”
Her karaoke song of choice, which she performs a bit of on the phone, is “Bust A Move” by Young MC.
Lewis is an ASU grad
Lewis graduated from Arizona State
University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism in 2001 and got her start in radio while still at ASU.
“I originally wanted to be a sports broadcaster like Linda Cohn on ESPN,” she says. “I was determined. I love sports, obsessed with football, specifically pro. But then in ‘99, I answered an ad in the State Press and started working at KNIX.”
Her first job was cold-calling people to ask, “Do you like the song a little? A lot? Hate it?”
It was fascinating work.
“I didn’t get paid very much,” Lewis says. “But I was in the building where they were making radio. And at that time, it was Tim & Willy. And they allowed me to kind of sit in.”
In 2001, after a year of essentially begging her boss at the time, George King, to put her on the air, she got what Eminem would call her one shot.
“I was just doing odd jobs,” she says. “I was filing. Stocking the kitchen. I was, of course, on the promo team. And there was one weekend where either everyone was sick or we had too many events. And George was like, ‘We’ll put you on the air.’”
In 2006, an opportunity arose to take a full-time on-air job at another country station, KiiM-FM (99.5) in Tucson, which had the added advantage of being near her hometown.
“I’m from just south of Tucson, Green Valley,“she says. “So that was like, ‘Whoa, how cool. Will my teachers hear me? Will my classmates hear me?’ And of course, they all did.”
Lewis spent the next three years at KiiM-FM, also serving as music director, before switching career paths altogether.
Why she went to work for Big Machine records
“In 2009, I had an opportunity that I said no to multiple times because I’ve always wanted to be in radio or broadcasting,” she says. “And that was to go work for a record label.”
When Lewis told her boss at KiiMFM she had an interview with the Big Machine Label Group, he told her, “I don’t think you should do this. I don’t think you’re gonna be good at this.”
In fact, a lot of people said they didn’t think she would be good at this.
“And that, of course, lit the fire under me,” she says. “I flew in, thought I tanked the interview, but I did get the job.”
While at Big Machine, where she stayed until 2016, she broke Florida Georgia Line on country radio, taking them around to stations in a 12-passenger van. She broke the Band Perry’s “If I Die Young,” a single that remains one of the top streaming songs of all time.
“I stayed much longer than I thought I ever would,” she says.
“But it was gratifying to make other people’s dreams come true. And it was very special to me to be able to still work
in radio, calling radio stations but to ask them to play these songs that I believed in, knowing I could speak their language.”
That was a cool little detour, she says. “But I always knew that if there was a chance I could get back to radio, I would take it.”
How she returned to KNIX
That chance arrived when Lewis took a job at KWNR-FM (95.5 The Bull), an iHeartMedia station in Las Vegas.
While there, she started tracking for KNIX before returning to the station in 2017.
“It felt so good just to be home in that building,” Lewis says. “I have bled KNIX since college. That’s been my radio station. Red, white and blue. America. Country music. I just always felt really at home there. And I never thought I’d come back nor hold such a big responsibility. And then to really grow my brand and have the year I had last year. No. 1 in all key demos, all formats.”
It’s the listeners that ultimately make the station feel like home for Lewis.
“It’s not the geography, though I do love the Valley,” she says. “It’s the people. We just have a different breed of listener at KNIX. They’re so loyal. They believe in us so much and we believe in them. That’s what makes it really special.”
It’s Lewis’ job — a job she does extremely well — to make those listeners feel a real connection to that voice they only get to hear in little 15-second chunks between their favorite songs.
“I am as authentic as they come,” she says.
“I think people can immediately feel that. And especially as the world becomes less and less authentic, I think people really seek that out. I am exactly who I am here. When I meet you, I’m the same me.”
As she enters this new chapter in her life at radio, as the PM drive host at a hot adult contemporary station, Lewis recognizes that it is a different format.
“But it’s really the same lifestyle. We’re people who love feel-good music, whether that’s country or what Mix plays. They really do go hand in hand.”
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