Buffett was inspired to create Radio Margaritaville after listening to radio stations in Australia, the Key West, and to WOYS in Apalachicola, Florida. He was attracted to the channels' wide range of programming, as opposed to the homogenized playlists he heard elsewhere. He contacted an old friend, Steve Huntington, who agreed to leave terrestrial radio to serve as program director for Buffett's new venture. "When we first started talking about this, we didn't know the Internet would be the route," Huntington said in a 2001 interview. "We figured it would be done in syndication or something. But we started doing some shows on the main Margaritaville site in 1998 and the response was very good." Buffett modeled the channel after pirate radio stations in terms of having no restrictions on what songs to play. It also recalled free-form FM radio of the 1970s with diverse playlists featuring music in the rock, jazz, blues, and folk genres. By 2002, Radio Margaritaville was one of the most popular Internet stations, though it had yet to build an audience that would rival small-market radio stations. Radio Margaritaville joined Sirius Satellite Radio in 2005 on channel 31 and Dish Network channel 6031. It became the first internet station to transition to mainstream radio, and can also be heard on radio. On November 12, 2008, following the merger of Sirius and XM Radio, the station was added to the XM lineup at channel 55. Radio Margaritaville's program director is Kirsten Winquist and the General Manager is Coleman Sisson. On air talent consists of hosts Steve Huntington, Kirsten Winquist, Sara West, Jasmine Shinness, Renee, and JD Spradlin. The station is broadcast from Margaritaville Cafe or Resort locations in Orlando, Key West, New Orleans, Nashville, Las Vegas, Jamaica, and Cancun. Radio Margaritaville now has a stinger often heard between songs of a steel drum with a few notes of "Margaritaville", adding to station identity. SiriusXM's station, "The Highway," added a Friday afternoon-drive program, Music Row Happy Hour, to its lineup in 2016. Hosted by Buzz Brainard, the show is broadcast from the Margaritaville Restaurant in Nashville and has featured visits from such artists as Brett Eldredge, Maren Morris, and Blake Shelton. The show "created a natural cross-promotion with Jimmy Buffett’s Radio Margaritaville channel." As of August 2017, Radio Margaritaville averages three million unique listeners a week.
