KPLU sale would be a loss for region’s radio lovers

I've been listening to KPLU since 1971. I grew up in Parkland, about a mile from the Pacific Lutheran University campus.

KPLU was my first source for National Public Radio (NPR). It started out as a typical low-wattage, limited range, student-run campus radio station. But it was clear, even from the beginning, that it would not stay that way.

Throughout the 1980s, KPLU expanded its range and explored different formats. In the early days the station played college rock and requests. For a while it had an all-day arts program, finally settling on jazz, with blues on weekends, interspersed with NPR and APR programs like “Car Talk,” “This American Life” and, of course, “Prairie Home Companion.”

Much to my amazement, when I lived in Olympia, I could get KPLU on my little portable radio. About 10 years later, when I was living in Bellingham, I could still get KPLU on my car radio.

Wherever I went, whatever I was doing, KPLU was always a taste of home, a reminder of my roots. And thanks to live, online streaming, when I was in southern China in May, I could listen to KPLU as it was being broadcast back home.

As much as it was a reminder of home while I was in China, there was nothing more disorienting than listening to “Morning Edition” in the evenings and “All Things Considered” in the early morning. And thanks to being on the other side of the international dateline, I was getting urgent news from yesterday.

The local weather reports were even more surreal; the season was the same, but time of day, date and side of the earth could not have been more different.

KPLUs traffic reports seemed almost sedate compared to the clamourous, polluted chaos of Chinese traffic. In Seattle, delays were measured in minutes; in China it could be hours, if not days. And in China there was no rush hour – or, to be more precise, there was no non-rush hour.

With a sustained growth rate of at least 20 percent for years, trucks and trains packed with workers, cement and steel girders rushed by every hour of the day and night.

Virtually no one spoke decent English, my work was intense, the air had an acidic tinge, the tap water was opaque and foul-smelling, I had pickled vegetables for breakfast every day and (sometimes) tofu cooked in duck blood for dinner.

Through all that, KPLU reminded who I was and where I came from. And now, as 2015 comes to an end, I hear that KUOW is buying KPLU.

I like KUOW. It, too, has an intriguing and compelling mix of news shows, story-telling programs and music you won't hear anywhere else.

The purpose of this sale is said to “enhance the listener's experience” – which should strike terror in the heart of anyone who knows and loves radio.

The new (and yet to be approved by the FCC) formatting is that KPLU will be all jazz and KUOW all news. I like jazz, but all jazz has no appeal to me. And an all-news station sounds terrible. I like the mix.

Even though I currently go back and forth from KPLU and KUOW, if this sale and new format go through, I will probably give up on both of them.

Commercial radio in the greater Puget Sound area used to be resourceful, creative and local. We had a mix of public, commercial and alternative radio that was the envy of far larger urban areas.

Stations like KRAB, KZAM, KBCS, KEXP, KXOT and a few others filled out the local radio landscape with unique programming. Most are gone, but a few continue.

Conglomeration and predictability are the guiding principles of radio now. But not just radio. Corporate takeovers and the homogenization of our tastes in everything from food to music has limited our choices and we, and our airwaves and diets, are the poorer for it.

The chatty, witty radio host is a relic of the past. All-news and all-jazz is almost certainly code for all-programmed.

It's the end of an era. And it's a sad and all too familiar story. Once again, something is nurtured into healthy existence in Tacoma, only to be taken and claimed by Seattle.

This story was originally published November 27, 2015 at 3:39 AM with the headline "KPLU sale would be a loss for region’s radio lovers."