Back in the day, mid-60’s, KJR’s market share approached 35% with their top-40 format.  Today that kind of market share is unheard of for a music station.  KJR is an AM Seattle station on 950 KHz.  Today it is a sports radio format.

The Internet, cable, satellite, podcasts, all competing have resulted in a degree of specialization that did not exist 40-50 years ago and really has killed broadcasting and replaced it with narrowcasting.  It’s not the same now when you listen and you know the experience is shared by only a few that share your interests.

There was magic in those days when there were a good number of clear channels where a station just went forever.  KJR didn’t have the power that clear channel stations had, they ran 5Kw directional at night, but they still were widely heard.  Part of the reason is that they had their antenna on Harbor Island, which was just a few feet above sea-level in a salt-water area so ground conductivity was excellent.

When I was a teenager (40 years ago), I ran a bootleg radio station and used to go down to KJR to scrounge old equipment which was often given to us or sold for almost nothing.  The folks there were very nice.  The engineers let me sit in on proof of performance testing, actually at KISW, which helped me to learn what was involved as I was working towards a 1st phone at the time.

Most music format stations have moved to FM, and most clear channels got turned into minority stations, and digital has created so much hash from the powerful stations that weaker adjacent stations are lost in the hash.  The magic is gone, the fun is gone, it’s a lost era.