I'm finding KIRO-FM's programming is getting about as bi-polar as the typical dive bar customer in Ballard. Personally, I respect and enjoy listening to Dave Ross, and am trying to get used to him being the morning news anchor (I'll switch over when KUOW or WPLU's increasingly-frequent local inserts during Morning Edition get annoying). And his pairing with Luke is often fun to hear their playful inter-generational banter. Many of their newscasters are pros, and some of the weekend hosts have been engaging, too.
But when I listen to them in the morning, I find running all the promos and commercials voiced by the station's afternoon talent is making me tune away a lot more often than I used to, and that may surprise some of the sales execs who seem to have taken a seminar promoting the use of "personal endorsements ads" a bit too far. As soon as Dorey Monson's cartoonish voice starts another of his trade-out endorsements with "Hey, I'm Dorey Monson!" -- I flip the switch to another station, or turn it off and get on with my day. Same goes with Don or Ron or whichever one tightens his throat so much to sound like an old-school rock jock that it gives me a sore throat just to hear him.
Then there's the ads for Dave Smith Motors in Idaho or wherever and several other over the top obnoxious spots. Yeah, I remembered their name. But don't think I would EVER trust or do business with such hard-sell clowns! Same goes for the businesses in such scenic wonderlands as Fife or Lynnwood or the Denny Ave exit from I-5 -- the ones who erect super-bright LED billboard that flash every half second. This crop of ads on KIRO seem to be their aural equivalent. Maybe all that ugly noise and hysteria gets some gullible people excited. But you'll run out of those people quickly.
Those of us who like to think we still have a least half a brain, and are coming to KIRO-FM in the mornings, are sent away screaming by the afternoon antics well before Noon now, during what seems like every other spot break. Now add the early evenings with Mr. Curley back under the big top, and my radio listening time gets less and less. Even tho' I'm hungry for engaging radio, and want more than one local choice for trustworthy news and talk radio at a time. The absence of KPTK is really starting to feel like a death in the family, all these months after they were sportified, too. Can't Seattle radio, and KIRO-FM in particular, develop something other than the crop of fakey loudmouthed narcissists that we're being handed as Seattle's excuse for "personalities?"
