Bill Virgin's Radio Beat June 14, 2007

Includes archive of Bill Virgin's columns fromJ une 2006 - March 2009

Bill Virgin's Radio Beat June 14, 2007

Postby radiofan » Wed Jun 13, 2007 6:33 pm

On Radio: The Mountain's format looks safe Mountain's listeners can feel secure
By BILL VIRGIN
P-I REPORTER


Few people know what the format's acronym -- AAA -- stands for. Even those who know AAA is "adult album alternative" have a hard time defining specifically what it means.

Whatever it is, few music formats on the radio dial generate as loyal a core of listeners to the stations that play it.

So listeners of Seattle's AAA station, KMTT-FM (103.7), may have been a bit thrown by a series of changes The Mountain has gone through in the past seven months, and left wondering what's ahead for the format and the music.

Those include the departure of longtime Seattle radio host Mike West, moving his former co-host, John Fisher, to afternoons, moving afternoon host Marty Riemer to mornings, the ousting of program director and former midday host Shawn Stewart and the naming of a new program director from Portland.

That new program director, Kevin Welch, promises that the AAA format is safe at KMTT (which tied for 12th among commercial stations in the Seattle-Tacoma market in the winter-quarter ratings book), and that he isn't coming in to "fix" it. "Fixed means that it's broken; if it's truly broken that means they change the format," he says.

Welch comes from a AAA-format station in Portland, KINK-FM, with an even longer heritage than KMTT's. But that doesn't mean he'll simply make KMTT sound like KINK, he adds.

Classic rock or country stations from market to market draw from the same body of music and sound largely the same from market to market. Reflecting its indeterminate boundaries and the pools of music genres from which it can draw, AAA can sound very different from market to market, Welch says.

KINK got its start in 1968 as a self-styled "underground" rock station. It later went through a jazz phase, morphing into today's version that tries to balance well-known artists with more obscure tracks and performers. "You can't play tons of esoteric music and get a lot of listeners," Welch says.

The Mountain, which began in 1991 and adopted the AAA format in 1992, faces some of the same challenges of balance, although it has its roots more firmly in mainstream (defined today as classic) rock. That won't change, Welch says. Some of the first artists The Mountain ever played -- Bonnie Raitt, Van Morrison, REM, Jackson Browne and Eric Clapton -- still are featured on the station, and many of those artists are still putting out new music. One element of KMTT's appeal to its listeners is playing "music you really got to love in college and post-college."

But Welch is also mindful that Seattle is an exceptionally crowded market for classic rock and classic hits. "We don't want to become a jukebox and we don't want to become an oldies station," he says. The music the Mountain plays "doesn't always have to be the hit, and it doesn't have to be the hot person on the block."

Maintaining that balance to listeners' satisfaction will be one of Welch's major challenges. So will maintaining the feel of the station between the records. Welch says he's pleased with the station's current lineup -- Riemer, Haley Jones, Fisher and Chris Sheridan -- and wants to emphasize the fact that the hosts are local.

"You're going to hear a station a lot more focused in the community," he says, adding that he'll encourage hosts to talk to listeners about songs and the artists. "With all the options people have -- satellite, iPods, TV -- the one thing they don't have is that local, direct, immediate feel."

In other radio notes:

Media Monitors has posted on its Web site the top advertisers in the Seattle radio market, by number of spots aired, for the week of June 4. Heading the list: Paramount Equity Mortgage, Shane Co., Super Supplements, Geico and Sleep Country USA.

A local company is the latest to weigh in on the dispute over increasing royalties for music played on Internet steams.

RealNetworks' chief executive Rob Glaser signed a letter, along with executives of Yahoo, Live365 and Pandora, to members of Congress, objecting to a provision that would set a minimum annual royalty rate of $500. For large webcasters like RealNetworks that offer multiple channels, that could cost such companies hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

"The future of music, of technology and innovation, of small artists and independent labels and millions of music-loving consumers is at stake," the letter says.

KBSG-FM (97.3), one of three former Entercom stations now operated by Bonneville Communications, has named a new program director: Dave Logan, whose résumé includes stints at XM Radio, AirAmerica and New York's WCBS-FM when it was an oldies station.

Jazz guitarist Mimi Fox performs live in the studios of KPLU-FM (88.5) at 2 p.m. Thursday.

Seattle hip-hop group The Blue Scholars appears on "The Beat" at 2 p.m. Thursday on KUOW-FM (94.9).

Lizz Sommars' guests on "Conversations" at 6 a.m. Sunday on KISW-FM (99.9) and KKWF-FM (100.7) include Mark Lindquist, trial team chief in the Pierce County prosecutor's office and author of the novel "The King of Methlehem."

Don Riggs' guests on "Introspect Northwest" at 7 a.m. Sunday on KMPS-FM (94.1) and 9 a.m. Sunday on KPTK-AM (1090) include CBS correspondent Bill Geist, author of "Way Off the Road."

The Sunday edition of Jim French's "Imagination Theatre," heard at 8 p.m. Saturday and Sunday on KIXI-AM (880), includes the winner of the show's second annual writers competition, a science-fiction tale "Cargo on the Run."

P-I reporter Bill Virgin can be reached at 206-448-8319 or billvirgin@seattlepi.com.

Bill Virgin's Radio Beat Thursdays in the Seattle P-I
Those who danced were thought to be quite insane by those who couldn't hear the music.
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