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KNTU flips to Indie

HTX said:
I did hear KBFW on 87.9 about 3 months ago. I’m pretty sure the 87.9 in San Antonio is still a thing
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The San Antonio station has an HD subchannel of 92.9 and a translator. It may still have the LPTV/Franken FM, but it definitely had prepared for the possibility that it would be forced to sign off.
 
Like, cool, man! KNTU slipped into their HD mode with little or no fanfare and "The One " for Jazz is on 88.1 HD2! Now if I just had an HD radio in my car...

Looks like they bumped up their power too. Full scale on my Sangean HDR-16 kitchen radio in NW Dallas. Was never full scale before. Or maybe that's just a characteristic of the radio being in HD mode.
 
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The other day the signal was terrible. Today it was solid and HD. I'm wondering if they had to do some transmitter work to get the HD set up.
 
Looks like KNTU has an active construction permit for non-directional power at 55,000 W Class C1.

Could explain the signal being better in some areas despite losing some of their fringe coverage.
 
ABMedia1 said:
Looks like KNTU has an active construction permit for non-directional power at 55,000 W Class C1.

Could explain the signal being better in some areas despite losing some of their fringe coverage.
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I've noticed they are a lot weaker in Muenster and Gainesville.
 
macattack said:
I believe that they did improve the signal in addition to the HD upgrade.
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I got 88.1 in the middle of Oak Cliff going south on 35 toward Desoto.
 
I hate to throw shade on Indie at this stage, but their playlist might be more constricted than the Edge.

That might be a function of the current weak state of alt music, but I set my radio to wake up to Indie and it's either "Run Away to Mars," "World's Smallest Violin" or "Trampoline." They also rotate non-grunge 90s heavy, like 311 or Sublime. I've heard Arctic Monkeys and Black Keys but haven't heard Arcade Fire yet.

They've sent grunge to the rubbish bin for the most part other than the occasional Pearl Jam song, which was a crutch that late-era Edge leaned on way too much. That's a major plus.
 
Triple Fake Jerry said:
I hate to throw shade on Indie at this stage, but their playlist might be more constricted than the Edge.

That might be a function of the current weak state of alt music, but I set my radio to wake up to Indie and it's either "Run Away to Mars," "World's Smallest Violin" or "Trampoline." They also rotate non-grunge 90s heavy, like 311 or Sublime. I've heard Arctic Monkeys and Black Keys but haven't heard Arcade Fire yet.

They've sent grunge to the rubbish bin for the most part other than the occasional Pearl Jam song, which was a crutch that late-era Edge leaned on way too much. That's a major plus.
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Keep in mind that their primary audience are college students - I doubt most college students are that interested in grunge or post-grunge music in this day and age. You'd be surprised at how many college students these days love Sublime; they've experienced something of a revival in recent years, so I'm not surprised that Sublime is getting rotated heavily. 311 is another band that has a sizable Gen Z audience so them getting used as gold standbys isn't surprising either.

Indie 88.1 also plays the Pumpkins a lot (whose grungeness has always been in question), but The Smashing Pumpkins is fairly popular among Gen Z so that isn't a huge shock either.
 
Triple Fake Jerry said:
I've heard Arctic Monkeys and Black Keys but haven't heard Arcade Fire yet.
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I haven't listened to radio a lot these days (let alone 88.1) but I wouldn't be surprised to know if they haven't played anything from other bands like Silversun Pickups, Hot Hot Heat, The Strokes (that isn't "Last Night"), The White Stripes (that isn't "Seven Nation Army"), The Hives, Cage the Elephant, Something Corporate/Jack's Mannequin/Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness, The Kooks, Kasabian, among with others that would fit the indie category.
 
Sample hour (10:30-11:30 am CST):

Weezer - "Records" (C)
Vampire Weekend - "Harmony Hall"
Paramore - "This Is Why" (C)
Blur - "Song 2"
Giovannie & The Hired Guns - "Ramon Ayala" (R)
Snow Patrol - "Chasing Cars"
R.E.M. - "The One I Love"
Twenty One Pilots - "Heathens"
TALK - "Run Away To Mars" (C)
The Offspring - "Come Out And Play"
Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness - "Stars" (C)
3 Doors Down - "Kryptonite"
Machine Gun Kelly - "Bloody Valentine" (R)
X Ambassadors - "Renegades"
Nine Inch Nails - "Hurt (Live)"
Pearl Jam - “Better Man”
Maneskin - "The Loneliest" (C)

Honestly this is a pretty good song list. Nothing out of left field other than the live version of the NIN song, but it places a decent amount of focus on the 2010's and fresher songs that college students would be likely to identify with, with only a smattering of 20th century standbys. The songs from the 00's are also pretty decently known to college-aged people.

It would be an astoundingly aggressive playlist by commercial radio standards especially for a daypart.
 
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