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Bellingham Radio

P

Puget Sound Radio

All stations owned by one company (Cascade Radio Group). Not a good sign.


KAFE.....nice AC station. Good sounding personalities. Programmed well, sounds big market. Connected to the community.

KISM....good Classic Rock (if you like Floyd/Zep/Skynyrd, etc). Program director's from Ireland....again, sounds bigger than the market.

KPUG....Mostly ESPN and Jim Rome, but an entertaining local afternoon sports show. Funny hosts. Could use more local phone calls. Seahawks football, Mariners baseball.

KBAI....syndicated Oldies w/ some local voice tracking.

KGMI....NewsTalk. Outstanding morning news block (has won 2 Murrows). Rush & O'Reilly. So-so 1 hour morning talk show. Good noon news block. Very bad "Come-Enjoy-Jesus" daily religious afternoon show hosted by the program director. Equally bad late aft/early eve. talk show done by 2 of the station's reporters, who sound like interns. Decent liberal talk show in the evening.



I enjoy listening to the radio, as you can see. But its a shame one company owns every station around. The newstalker has great promise, but, man, the religious programming just makes it run into a brick wall each day. I understand its the PD's personal baby, so it probably won't be going anywhere anytime soon. Would love to have a newstalk station here that knew what it was doing.
 
Well, not sure what exactly your point was there.

I was just lamenting the solo ownership of the market, plus the fact that the PD of KGMI feels compelled to hold a Jesus revival every afternoon on what is otherwise a decent newstalk station.
 
Hey, I give them HUGE props for the morning news, the noon news etc. But the locally produced talks shows could use some tweaking. The PD has 2 shows (morning and afternoon) and really lets her religion get in the way. The late afternoon show is just awful...a couple of kids who whine about nothing in general. It really sounds like something you'd hear on a high school station. Then there's a 1 hour liberal rant from 6-7pm that can be informative sometimes.

It just astounds me that the other stations in this cluster sound big market, but the PD-driven local talk shows on KGMI are a total embarassment to professional radio. The area is served by other Christian stations....there's just no need for a decent, secular news talk station to serve as a pulpit for the PD's crusade.
 
Speaking of Bellingham radio, do people listen to Vancouver or Victoria Radio stations instead of Bellingham. I can hear almost all of Vancouver Radio stations in Bellingham.
 
Well, I've been here about 2 years and haven't been able to get a clear bead on what everybody listens to. I get a sense that KAFE is quite popular in Bellingham and bit south, plus I hear people from Canada calling in, so they obviously have listeners to the north. KGMI is VERY local and has been around for 80 years! I can pick up a number of Vancouver stations when driving around, but don't really hear anybody talking about them. Certainly don't see any of those stations making an impact on the street. And the market's not rated by any service, so its hard to tell if the Vancouver stations have any effect. Actually, I'm pretty impressed with the local stations for a market this size (about 70-75K). They all seem to try and strive for a larger market sound.
 
Well. living in Bellingham (which makes me a Bellinghamster.) I pretty much think the Saga/Cascade stations are pretty boring. I tend to go for the underdogs like KUGS and even KMRE-LP. (So this means my taste runs from Rudy Vallee to Atari Teenage Riot.) Bellingham is also full of pirate broadcasters which pop up from time to time (and that's one thing ya gotta LOVE about it...)
 
If it makes you feel any better when I travelled through Bellingham KAFE sounds alot like KVIL in Dallas you can listin to KVIL on the net.
 
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