RAPID CITY - Area radio listeners now have a new station to turn to for their sports fix. Badlands Broadcasting has made the switch to sports talk radio. KRKI 99.5 started its new format on Monday by introducing 995 ESPN Talk Radio.

"It was something that this market needed," said KRKI programming director Lonnie Glasford. "We haven't had something like this before. We knew it would be fantastic to have an all-sports station, so we investigated it and were able to get ESPN fulltime."

KRKI will be the only station on FM which offers ESPN Radio 24 hours a day and seven days a week.

The programming schedule will include, "Mike and Mike in the morning," "The Herd," and "Mike Tirico" as talk radio programs and will also offer the BCS national championship, 19 NBA games, college basketball and Major League Baseball.

"Anyone who watches ESPN knows these names," said Glasford. "The reaction has been phenomenal. When we told people ESPN was coming on their eyes got big, and they get excited. That is a lot fun."

KRKI operated as a country music station for less than a year, and Glasford said the station struggled to compete in a saturated market. Most recently KRKI played Christmas music, however, Glasford felt the timing was right to make the switch.

"When you have a radio station you want to fulfill a need. We had gone country but it wasn't really a need that needed to be fulfilled because there are so many other country stations," he said. "So we wanted to find something that would make us different, and we didn't have an all-sports station anywhere in this region."

Glasford says for now the station will offer only national programming from the ESPN network, though he hopes to add local programming in the future.

"We would like to become the up-to-the minute source for all local sports scores," Glasford said. "Regardless of the team or the venue."