at 5:30 a.m. Program Director Pat McMahon, Assistant Program Director Steve Knoll and Production Director Dave Kay planned the stunting. In October 1997, Nationwide sold the station and sister KEGL to Jacor. In 1999, Jacor merged with Clear Channel Communications. In 2009, Clear Channel (now iHeartMedia) laid off over 2,000 employees to lower costs and forced its "Mix" branded stations to voice track most of their airtime, leaving very few live personalities across the nation. Among laying off in Dallas, the voices of midday personality Lisa Thomas was replaced with fellow Clear Channel station KUSS's midday personality, Cindy Spicer. Late night personality Joe Kelley was replaced with voicetracking. Morning co-host Tony Zazza was replaced with weeknight personality Jen Austin and Program Director Rick. Zazza then became the morning host at former competing station CBS Radio-owned 103.7 KVIL, which flipped full-time to Hot AC/Adult Top 40 in early 2014. Later that year, Jen Austin was laid off as well. With afternoons, shortly hosted by PD Rick, but was later replaced by the satellite-fed On Air with Ryan Seacrest. In 2011, in response to changing listener habits, KDMX began adding more hip-hop and EDM titles to its playlist, and was briefly marketed as "The New Sound of Mix 102.9". "102-9 NOW" (2012-present) On May 18, 2012, KDMX rebranded as 102.9 Now, dropping most modern AC artists, and shifted to an adult top 40 format heavy on currents and recurrents. However, as of October 2012, KDMX returned to Hot AC. Some of the Modern AC artists have returned to the station's playlist, and dropped some hip hop tracks, though the station still has a current-heavy focus with less dependence on gold tracks. The switch back to Hot AC was likely due to low ratings, as well as to avoid playlist overlap with sister Top 40 KHKS. Starting in 2014, the station aired the syndicated "Bert Show" in morning drive, which originated from WWWQ in Atlanta. The show was later dropped and replaced with a music-heavy morning show. It is noted that both KDMX and Tacoma/Olympia, Washington-based sister station KYNW (which flipped to Adult Top 40 themselves in June 2013) shared the same branding and logo until January 2016. KDMX-HD2 KDMX originally launched a secondary HD Radio (HD2) subchannel known as "The Music Summit", broadcasting an AAA format. It has since then moved to KZPS 92.5-HD2 to make way for Pride Radio (previously on