I just don't understand why we need to ruin a fun and entertaining format, with a legacy dating back many decades just to slap another station that nobody is going to care about on the dial.
If I was to hazard a guess, it would be listener apathy. You might have ties to KGY, but you're surely among a much smaller audience than they used to have.
Back in the mid-70s, when I worked there, we ran the "Wolfman Jack Show", which arrived on 7" tape reels. At that time, the outside walkway went completely around the building, so people could go right up to the control room window. We had to close all the curtains during the show, because people would drive to the place and crowd around the windows, trying to catch a glimpse of the Wolfman, whom they were sure was right here in the Olympia studio. Today... something like that wouldn't fool anyone.
In its heyday, KGY was one of just two stations in the Olympia market, the other being mostly-automated KITN (920). HBO was the only movie channel on cable, and had just started service. There were no FM stations there, no internet, no smart phones. We had an old Volkswagen Microbus for a remote truck. It had a mobile phone!!!... but you had to call a ship-to-shore operator to use it. Radio was a big deal then. You could do a remote, selling windshield wipers at a used car lot and fill the place up. Now, the medium doesn't have that effect.
We had a record library that filled a whole room. We answered the phones, took occasional requests... and played them without making a big deal about it.
KGY was not a 24-hour station back then. It didn't have to be. Dick signed on at around 5, I think. We ran until 10pm on weekdays, midnight on Friday and Saturday. The logs were well-filled, and at Christmas time, you'd be lucky to find a place to fit in another spot. Back then, that kind of radio was called 'successful' Today, people would complain there were waaaaaay too many commercials.
More recently, I think KGY has struggled to find, or keep a relevant place in the market. The current generation of Kerrys have changed formats on both their stations (in the case of the AM, more than once) and turned over most of their staff. They even asked you, the audience, what you'd support on the AM... not something I'm convinced is particularly effective... but they tried. In the end, KGY served to legitimize an fm translator. The announcers referred to the station as "Oldies 95.3", casting aside the underlying AM until station ID time.
KGY sold for about 1/5 what it was once valued at, back when Dick Pust, P.J. Kirkland, Bob McLeod and Dick Nichols made a very strong presence in the market. That's probably more a sad legacy than what the format might eventually become. Glad I didn't own it.
As for the format, everyone's welcome to their opinion. KGY started as an experiment at a religious college. It seems it's headed back toward the vicinity of its roots. If that's what it takes to keep it alive, then it's serving somebody.
Back in 2006(?), 1340 in Tumwater, then a religious station, sold to the University of Washington for twice the money. I'm sure there are those who would view that as a waste, or at best, a lateral move. Others probably like it a lot.
