Austin Right At Home In Iowa
• Gail Austin has returned home to Iowa and joined Pritchard Broadcasting Company in Burlington as GM/Sales Manager for the six-station group that includes Top 40 KHDK (Hot 97.3), AC KKMI, Country KDMG (Big Country 103.1), Classic Rock WQKQ (KQ92), News-Talk KBUR-AM and Fox Sports affiliate KBKB-AM. She’s also doing middays on Big Country 103.1. The new gig is literally a homecoming for Austin, who, according to her jock bio, is “a farm girl, born and raised on her family farm on the bluff in Henderson County and attended what was then Union High School. Go West Central!”
But wait! The story gets even better — Austin was born on the very floor of the building she now broadcasts from — it was a hospital back then. No, seriously. “It gets wilder than that,” Austin tells RAMP. “I was born during a very bad storm. My name was going to be ‘Dawn’ after my dad, Don, or Linda, when KBUR announced the storm was producing ‘Gale Force winds’… so ‘Gail’ it is, and now I get to work with KBUR!”
Austin most recently worked for iHeartMedia St. Louis as SVP of Programming and PD/midday personality for Country KSD (93.7 The Bull) until June 2022, when she was caught up in a round of company downsizing.
Austin is probably best known for her lengthy tenure in Jacksonville, which dates back to 1997-1999 when she was PD of Jacor/Clear Channel Country WQIK. After a two-year stint in Columbus as PD of WCOL & OM of The Buckeye Country Network, Austin returned to Jacksonville in Sept. 2001 and served as OM of the Clear Channel/iHeartMedia cluster for the next decade. Austin later served as EVP of Operations for Precision Imaging Centers Jacksonville until returning to radio in 2018 as PD of KSD, adding SVPP stripes in 2020.
Austin is now on the job and can be congratulated at at gailh@burlingtonradio.com.
