KEXP Retreats From Tacoma
KEXP recently announced that they will be pulling out of the Tacoma area and ceasing to broadcast on the 91.7 KXOT FM band they were using down there. The easy thought on this is similar to the one that appeared when, say, the Bellevue Art Museum announced it was shutting its doors: That is, "Anyone that lives in the area outside of Seattle is lame and doesn't care about art or culture and if they did they would live in Seattle. Furthermore, attempting to bring anyone outside of Seattle art or culture is a lost cause because they just don't care." Seattlest doesn't subscribe to that, of course, but it's out there. Actually, we were intrigued by the whole KEXP South experiment from the start, although we wouldn't quite say we thought that investing that volume of resources in old school radio land was the best idea. We don't pretend to know enough about the inner workings of KEXP to deliver any actual facts here, but it seems apparent that a battle has been waged on the inside of KEXP pitting geographic, FM expansion vs the internets and the internets have come out on top. The Tacoma invasion has been repelled and that AP "Little Radio Station That Could" piece has been reprinted in seemingly every paper in the country.
Meanwhile, the summer Arbitron ratings show that lameness has more than a foothold here in Seattle. The god-awful KJAQ has shot up to the sixth position in the list of our most popular radio stations. KJAQ is Jack FM, Infinity Broadcasting's "Adult Hits" radio station that forgoes DJs altogether and plays a mix of, well, a lot of stuff. Listening to it is like deleting every playlist you've ever designed, built or concieved of and setting your entire MP3 collection to random play. Ok, that works occasionally because all the music you have on your iPod is stuff that you specifically put there. Seattlest can listen to Seattlest's iPod on shuffle. We can listen to John Richards' iPod on shuffle. At KJAQ there is no DJ. Exactly whose iPod are we listening to?
