Garth Brooks isn't just on the radio. He's creating stations and programming.
The country music superstar announced the launch of Tailgate Radio on Tuesday, which will mix music and sports on the TuneIn streaming service. It's the second of two stations of his Sevens Radio Network, which launched in June with The Big 615, a country music station.
Brooks, who played football and baseball in high school, and got a track and field scholarship to Oklahoma State University (he competed in javelin), shared the news in a statement Tuesday, stating that the goal is to "bring game day beats to sports fans everywhere."
Tailgate Radio is "one of those ideas someone says, ‘Why didn’t we do this a long time ago?’ … This combines everyone’s passion for sports and music. It also allows you to enjoy your tailgate, barbeque or poolside party without doing the work. There’s so much music on this channel. Tailgate Radio will be everyone’s favorite.”
Tailgate Radio will broadcast 24/7 all year-round and was already blasting tunes Tuesday afternoon, with successive songs from Naughty By Nature ("Hip Hop Hooray"), Green Day ("American Idiot"), Dwight Yoakam ("Guitars, Cadillacs"), Post Malone ("Better Now") and Sgt Slick ("Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!").
Among the shows announced for Tailgate Radio:
Football fans will be able switch between Tailgate Radio and stations carrying football games using a new feature called TuneIn Switch, coming in September for Android and iOS devices. The feature will automatically switch to the game for kickoff and also lets you toggle between the game and Tailgate Radio.
Tailgate Radio is among the 100,000 radio stations and podcasts available on TuneIn, which has more than 75 million monthly active users. It is available on most connected devices and has Android and iOS apps.
You don't need TuneIn Premium to listen to Tailgate Radio – or Brooks' other station The Big 615 – but when you subscribe ($49.99 annually) you get fewer ads, live MLB, NFL, NHL and college sports programming, plus commercial-free networks including CNN, Fox News Radio, CSPAN, MSNBC, CNBC and Bloomberg.
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