Talent, programming spiked at Seattle’s The End

How is it that when radio can be good, it chooses to be bad? Radio with the right ingredients can be Dave Chapelle in his prime, instead it is the worst Carrot Top gag you’ve ever groaned at.
Back in 1994 because radio sucks so badly in Vancouver a few of us lobbied the local cable company (then Rogers) hard to get KNDD (107.7FM The End) on FM cable in the Vancouver area. It’s been an up and down ride as the owners (Entercom, another soul-sucking radio corp) have screwed with the format, killed off their best programs and sacked their best announcers (and in one case re-hired them). Then someone in their wisdom brought in someone to not only be program director, but to allow him to hire his wife to co-host the afternoon drive program with him after firing then host Dick Rosetti.

I tried listening to the afternoon drive program, aka The Church of Lazlo, and just found it crass and uninspired. The soul of KNDD was Jim Keller, one of the few radio survivors in the Seattle biz who kept his job and managed to bring some class and joy to the airwaves whenever he got behind the mic. Keller and his colleague DJ Noname were given the boot last week.

Here’s a great comment from The Stranger’s website on this news which sums up how I think a lot of us feel.

Oh man! Listening to Jim Keller was part of my Sunday ritual! It was one of the few times I could listen to the radio and know I’d enjoy it and learn something. That really makes me sad that he’s gone. 🙁
I can’t even go near the radio during drive time anymore, Corolla, the Men’s Room, Lazlo, et al, make me want to jam a dull trowel through the collective frontal lobe of humanity, NPR usually has something on the news that pisses me off and, unless DJ Troy or DJ Rachel is filling in, KEXP has been boring my ass off lately in the morning.

Heck, it all makes sense. Have Adam Corolla pump his daily 5-hour program out of L.A. every morning, make the mid-day program some robot ‘interactive’ request crap piped out of the Midwest, move your truly talented new music programmer and evening guy (Harms) into the back office, and pay some couple to deliver trailer trash humour on the drive home. At least you don’t have to pay as much for health coverage, right Entercom?

Well, it’s lights off for another radio station for me. I’ve heard more than a few bite the dust in my short life. Fortunately there is practically no good radio programming left on air (internet continues to provide some choice), so I’m unlikely to feel this kind of disappointment in the future.

UPDATE: Some online discussions of the station from current and former listeners.

Some good quotes from these threads:

Lazlo: You aren’t funny, you aren’t interesting, neither is your wife.

If I were to re-program the End, I would ditch the adolescent sounding liners and FU line, traveling troll…
Let go of the self-depricating remarks, the train wreck imaging, and become focused on the music.

Observe KNRK 94.7, Seattleish. Smooth some things out, don’t try to be “in your face”. That makes for a quickly fatiguing set of ears.