KRCL: Different But Better
For people who live in the Salt Lake City area, the only radio station worth listening to for music is KRCL. It’s a community-owned and operated station that lives on donations and I’ve given generously to them. The music ranges from just-arrived-in-the-mail to soul to trip-hop to classic blues and jazz. But it’s all good. They recently changed their format and business structure to eliminate volunteer air personalities during the daytime weekday hours replacing them with full-timers.
There was a chorus of protest from many listeners and a few of the outgoing volunteers not to mention trepediation among the thousands of long-time listeners. I’ll admit some of the volunteer DJs were good but most were pretty amateurish, admitting regularly on-air that they had not prepared their shows and sounding like they just got to the studio after taking their geometry mid-term. The new format has eliminated most of the nervous chit-chat and useless bantering, added more diverse music and made the station even more listenable.
I miss their mid-day public affairs talk show “Radioactive” which I was on last year talking about solar power. But it’s been moved to the evening which makes more sense. I give the changes a big endorsement. I’ve always been a believer in public radio, not necessarily government subsidized but serving the interests of the public- in this case, people who love music, particularly new music- and are, albeit inadvertantly, saving radio from its own greed and mismanagement. Rock on, KRCL. I’m listening- all the time.