All the stations now have websites and streams accessible from the UK. Previously, all the Cumulus sites just had this, which is remarkably uninformative and suggests you're trying to 'attack' the site:
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Cumulus Media launches new website and it looks horrible
- Thread starter A_b_m_90
- Start date
Cumulus has never known quite what to do with that station. The rock format's brand manager ultimately just threw in the towel and told them to keep doing what they were doing until it stopped working. Cumulus did, however, use BXR's logs and clock to model WQKL 107.1 when it acquired the Clear Channel Ann Arbor cluster. Seems like it also used it for WKRU after it sold KRUZ 97.5 in California.
As Mark mentions, Emily is also the morning jock on 101.5 KPLA. Pretty sure she's only on BXR for an hour or two. Middays are mostly jockless. She's a friend, and she replaced me when I left that cluster in 2004. I left when my airtime and hours got cut, but she wanted part-time and had no on-air experience. So, the position was a good fit for her. She was able to hang around, pick up more hours until she became full-time, and got the morning co-host position at KPLA when Monica Senecal left.
I was actually thinking of Simon Rose, who's doing mid-mornings on KFRU and then afternoons on KBXR. So that makes two hosts who are doing double duty.
None of the website content service providers produce feeds for AAA. And Cumulus isn't going to produce a feed when they have only three stations in the format (Grand Rapids, Ann Arbor, and Columbia) so they're using SoCast's Alternative content feed.
I didn’t realize the Morning Meeting was still around after Cumulus sacked his most recent co-host. Looks like it still exists, though. Other than NFL programming and winter weather, I don’t listen to KFRU anymore.
One other thought...AAA formats are billed as "music discovery" formats but the air personalities may be just as important. Program directors may not realize that. The thought comes about from having three AAA stations available to me in Denver:
KBCO - iHeart, the legacy station. Friendly, approachable personalities, mildly adventurous playlist; probably also benefits from a Boulder vibe even though that's now just the city of license. (One host, Keefer, came there from KBXR.)
KVOQ (Indie 102.3) - Colorado Public Radio. The playlist is a little wider than on KBCO but doesn't go too far off the beaten path; the personalities, for the most part, seem to be too eager to be cool and can be hard to listen to after a while. It's a station I want to like but can't manage to do so.
KJAC (The Colorado Sound) - KUNC. Personalities strike a happy medium between demonstrating their musical knowledge and being approachable, though can be a bit deadpan at times; playlist isn't afraid to reach back into what you might have heard on college radio in the 1980s and 1990s but stays up-to-date, too.
KBCO, of course, has to run commercials and iHeart promotional crap; on the other hand, KVOQ and KJAC have had to make more requests for donations lately. Pick your irritant.
My fear is that, due to budgetary issues from the loss of CPB funding, felt more acutely at KUNC than at CPR, CPR might offer to take over The Colorado Sound, since the northern Front Range is the major missing piece in Indie 102.3's coverage other than a Fort Collins translator. (That would be despite some contentious history between KUNC and CPR back a couple of decades ago, but that was then and this is now.) That would be unfortunate; The Colorado Sound is a more engaging concept with, in my opinion, people who are better at communicating the right tone for a AAA station. Hopefully KUNC can keep it afloat.
It would kill me to see KFRU go away, but I'm having trouble seeing a place for it any more. It may be in a bit better shape than KLIK was, but its problems remind me of all the KGO/KSFO ramifications, just at a smaller scale.
Not sure what you mean, based on what I see at WXRT Chicago or KINK in Portland. A lot of care has been taken with air personalities.
My sense is that stations are responding to the funding crisis as best they can. We saw last week that an offer from WXPN Philadelphia was turned down by the licensee of WPSU. It seems that it's incumbent on the listeners to those stations to help raise as much local money as they can to replace the CPB money.
I would add KGNU to that list. Probably the most eclectic, with spoken word programming. And KGNU still has an AM frequency in addition to their FM signals. All together, Denver nay be home to the largest number of AAA, music discovery, eclectic oriented stations found on a single radio dial...anywhere!
I think this is more a matter of general public perception than what actually happens. I agree, WXRT takes a lot of care with having the right personalities. KINK has been hard for me to figure out, but I haven't been to Portland for a couple of years ever since I retired (my last engagement was in Portland) and there are lots of other streaming choices.
Based on what I'm hearing, they're trying...at least CPR and KUNC. (KGNU has had technical problems and I really don't want to resort to their AM signal in Denver, so I haven't listened to it much recently.) I understand why they're asking for money more often, but that doesn't dampen the irritation for listeners. It's a necessary negative.
KGNU is music mid-morning and mid-afternoons plus weekends; talk/information in AM and PM drive. They're smart enough to turn stereo off for the talk/information blocks. The immediate problem, hopefully resolved soon, is that the main Boulder FM is on reduced power at the moment, which is also apparently keeping its Denver FM translator (none too great to start with) from picking up and relaying the signal. I just checked and it's still broadcasting dead air. The AM is OK during the daytime, but not really good for nighttime listening in my area of Denver.
Add to your list Boulder's KVCU, which added the former Denver Open Media translator on 92.9 several months ago to cover Denver. College folks doing radio, so you never quite know what you'll hear. But they're not too crazy, either.
What's surprised me is that their switch in Grand Rapids putting Triple A on WKLQ seems to have worked out rather well. Cumulus isn't a company I traditionally think "gets" that format, but they've let BXR and 107one (WQKL) continue to do their thing and launched a new one. Good for them.
Also glad Simon Rose has made such a career out of it, British guy in a smaller market doing Triple A and then having stability on the heritage talk station when he's by no means a MAGA guy is impressive. Good for him.
KJAC (Colorado Sound) seemed to me to be more emphasizing Americana in its previous years, with KBCO taking the "center lane" (almost an AC format for that market, IMO at this point under iHeart) and KVOQ as the more "college radio with graduate degree" discovery outlet. If you go on Archive.org there's some unstopped KVOQ as OpenAir that was extremely deep, partly I think because the head of the programming at the time came from KVCU. The "Indie" relaunch mainstreamed it a bit but I still viewed it as a "younger" station with more edge than KJAC. Now when I check out KJAC, it's got less of that Americana lean than I remember. Perhaps that was the influence of Benji McPhail having programmed it who also was a part of KCUV, Denver's Americana station which at one point, broadcast on...102.3 in addition to 1510 AM.
He’s been around Columbia a long time. How he got there, I don’t know; I do know he married a local woman. I remember crossing paths with him when I was in grad school…I don’t recall how that came about, because I was in full-bore radio-hating mode in those days just a year or two after the demise of my radio career. I don’t think it would have been in a class because all my classes were math or computer science. Columbia’s not that small a place, so there must have been some reason. Anyhow, that was in the late 1980s.
There’s not much Americana on 105.5 at all, though there is a weekend speciality program, “Torch and Twang”. KJAC’s speciality shows are pretty good. Sunday morning is a good time to catch them; KUNC carries some, too.
From what I’ve read, OpenAir was deliberately eclectic, then CPR decided to narrow the playlist as the network expanded to become Indie. Thanks for the archive.org tip. I’ll have to check it out. As for present-day Indie 102.3, I’ll stick with my earlier comment of wishing I could like it but somehow I can’t. It’s a stronger version of how I felt about KFOG in San Francisco (and then I missed KFOG when it was gone…figures!), but at least KFOG had a better selection of personalities than Indie seems to (Jason Thomas is the exception…and his WXRT experience shows in how he can engage an audience in a way his colleagues can’t seem to).
I do enjoy streaming KBXR every so often. I’m also in Columbia periodically to see relatives so it’s also enjoyable to hear it over the air whenI I’m in the neighborhood.
I think originally, Torch and Twang was McPhail's baby. KJAC today in the median has a much different music mix to my ears. Jason Thomas is actually my favorite thing about KVOQ, he is an exceptional personality.
I agree on KFOG, I liked the branding and missed it - but especially in its later years, something about it just didn't hold me as closely as other stations in the format.
In my very brief time in the Bay Area, I spent more time on the FM dial with KSJO in its "Channel 92.3" era, programmed by Michael Solari. It was more like earlier Live 105 in spirit. I didn't find the 104.9 version as impressive as some, but for that time period they were doing a mix of earlier alternative classics with newer indie. A lot less of the crispy grunge standards, more new music. Not quite at "Indie 103.1" LA levels, but still a very well done mix.
I agree on KFOG, I liked the branding and missed it - but especially in its later years, something about it just didn't hold me as closely as other stations in the format.
In my very brief time in the Bay Area, I spent more time on the FM dial with KSJO in its "Channel 92.3" era, programmed by Michael Solari. It was more like earlier Live 105 in spirit. I didn't find the 104.9 version as impressive as some, but for that time period they were doing a mix of earlier alternative classics with newer indie. A lot less of the crispy grunge standards, more new music. Not quite at "Indie 103.1" LA levels, but still a very well done mix.
To be honest, I think it had become stale. Cumulus was probably beginning to have a demographic problem with it.
It's comparable to something that happened during my most recent Bay Area visit a couple of weeks ago. We had dinner with friends at Chez Panisse (upstairs) in Berkeley, which at one time was legendary. It was nice enough this time, but the main thing that was special about was the price level of the items on the menu. Our server was also overtasked. It felt like the place was living off its reputation without fully backing it up. Actually, there's a lot of that in Berkeley. In the 2010s, it felt like KFOG was living off its reputation in a similar way.
Channel 104.9 was around 2000. I had the good fortune of being able to pick it up in my San Francisco apartment. It was on Monument Peak at the time and there must have been more or less a straight shot to the Castro. I also had (and still have) a high-performance tuner (NAD 4300) that was good on weaker signals. I had to engage the narrow bandwidth position to filter out KFOG, as Sutro Tower was just a little more than a mile from me, but I could get 104.9 in stereo with relatively little noise. The classic alternative was enjoyable, and the production voice was, I believe, the same guy who did production for the first version of KITS, minus all the audio effects used to make his voice more ominous. Around 2000, KITS was fully in its hard-rock phase, complete with terrible audio quality, and was an absolute disappointment to listen to. 104.9 was more aligned with my tastes and sounded fine even at the distance the weaker signal had to travel.
My son lived in Denver a few years back & I visited some (& of course have streamed the respective stations). I actually kind of had the opposite feel in regards to Indie 102.3 vs The Colorado Sound. I preferred Indie’s format & it became a favorite of mine to stream. I liked the indie rock/pop focus they have & the kind of mainstream approach to it. I almost felt like this is where a true current based alternative radio format should be (if there was still a commercially viable audience for that). Whereas, at least at that time, KJAC The Colorado Sound, was much more rootsy/Americana/singer songwriter based, which is not my personal favorite iteration of the AAA format. (The rootsy based stations & more mellow singer songwriter based formats are just too sleepy sounding for me). But anyway, I think Willobee has done a great job with Indie 102.3 & creating an indie rock/pop format that’s adventurous , but still much more approachable then something like KEXP Seattle. I also liked the similar format he did for a short time at Nevada Public Radio (NV89) before joining CPR. Indie 102.3’s format also reminds me of SiriusXM’s indie channel, SiriusXMU, which I’ve always liked. I’d almost consider Indie a separate “indie riock/pop” format moreso than necessarily a AAA in the traditional sense. But it’s where the format should go if it wants to progress in a younger direction instead of aging out with its audience.
But as you say, Denver is a great radio market with lots of really good choices.
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The Americana is mostly gone. These days, KJAC occupies a position between KBCO and KVOQ, with more classic alternative than either, though it's still mostly AAA.
The music on KVOQ pretty much agrees with me, but most of the personalities don't. KVOQ does have the best audio quality of the three.
That's the interesting thing about KVCU. They're figuring out how to appeal to that younger audience and aren't hung up on 45-year-old genre labels.
The only choice that's lacking is all-news, or at least news/talk with a news operation that does more than headlines but that also doesn't spend 20 minutes droning on about a topic the way CPR does, but I'm not holding out hope for that.
Not sure what it's like now, but Denver has long had a reputation for being a CHR Hell. 95.7 might fill the hole effectively these days, but KS104/107.5 has never satisfied those who don’t like the rhythmic variety of hits.
That's pretty much what 95.7 is there for, but it's an iHeart station. Aside from meaning that it can be somewhat robotic, the rest of the stations in the cluster are male-oriented and 95.7 probably isn't.