When I was a young teen, my Father and Mother discovered the idea of camping. Dad had just gotten a new Chevrolet truck, with a canopy over the back, and when Mom looked inside the canopy, she said "You know -- we could go camping in this!"
Dad thought it was a cool idea. So they got a camping stove, a large, metal cooler for ice (that could double as a seat), a large, plastic, square water container (it held maybe 5 gallons of water), and three sleeping bags.
The next Summer vacation my parents took -- probably late in July or early August of that year -- we went camping. We took too much stuff, but we did OK, and had fun. Naturally, I always took my radio. We went to the Oregon Coast, an area my father always was interested in. He was a rockhound, and was always interested in going to places where you could find agates.
And Dad had read, or heard, that there were several places along the Pacific Coast, and Oregon Coast, where you could find agates. Japanese, glass fishing floats were another item he wanted to find. But agates were the thing.
We went to Fort Stevens, on the ocean near Astoria, Oregon (no agates); Agate Beach near Port Angeles on Washington's Olympic Peninsula (no agates there, either); and "Agate Beach" just off the Yaquina Bay estuary in Newport, Oregon (no agates there, either).
Although Dad did find a small, glass fishing float lodged near a piece of driftwood at Fort Stevens, and found a lot of interesting rocks, he found no agates. Unknown to Dad, the Cedar River, which runs maybe three blocks from our house here in Renton, has agates. :-) I have found maybe 20-30 of them of varying quality. I only discovered that my local river was an agate, jasper, and petrified wood location just 5-6 years ago.
It's ironic that Dad wanted to find agates so bad, and we journeyed to various places in the Pacific Northwest to find them, and yet they were just within 3 blocks (or a mile, if you go to the part of the river where they're more easily found) of the house.
But, we spent a lot of time on the Oregon Coast. Nearly every summer vacation camping trip included the Oregon Coast. We camped at places like Fort Stevens State Park, Yaquina Bay State Park, Beachside State Park, Beverly Beach State Park, and Harris Beach State Park. We camped along the entire Oregon Coast, enjoying the mild weather; the rocky headlands; sandy beaches; sand dunes; the moor-like fields and misty bogs of Curry County; and the warm ocean water near Brookings, Oregon, at Harris Beach -- just next to the California border.
My dad loved Oregon.
And, invariably, whenever we went to the Oregon Coast, we went through, or stayed near, Newport, Oregon.
Newport is one of the larger cities on the Oregon Coast, and it's about halfway down. It's not far from the larger, inland cities of Salem, Albany, and Corvallis using US Highway 20 -- those cities being maybe a distance of 50-70 miles away, on the other side of the Coast Range. Newport has maybe 10,000 people. Lincoln City, a long, sprawling town maybe 15 miles north, has about 9,000 people and is a popular tourist attraction. Only the Oregon Coast cities Astoria and Coos Bay are larger in population. Newport has got a fishing port, a NOAA marine facility, and it's a popular tourist center, as many Oregonians pass through it to get to other parts of the Coast.
There are also many nice beaches in the Newport area, too.
And, up until recently, Newport has had a radio station, KNPT 1310. I remember tuning in KNPT when we'd drive down the coast. I don't remember if they played Top 40 or not, but there weren't a ton of AM radio stations on the coast at the time, and fewer FM stations. The inland stations from Corvallis and Salem didn't have great coverage over coastal areas at the time, either. FM was just kicking in at rural, non-metropolitan areas at the time, and most small towns and cities in the PNW still didn't have FM stations. They could just afford to support an AM station. And KNPT was one of these.
I haven't been to the Oregon Coast in over 20 years, but I have heard stations from the Oregon Coast while DXing the AM band, though. KDUN 1030, Reedsport, used to come in with strong signals, playing oldies, back in 2011-2014 or so. They went off the air, and then were bought by radio personality Delilah Rene maybe 2 years ago, and they're back on the air again. KAST Astoria, 1370, used to come in very well. The popular resort town Seaside's KSWB 840 was always audible at night in 2012, with their Classic Hits and oldies. KCUP Toledo, Oregon, on 1230, comes in now and then with classic hits, and maybe some talk and sports.
Most of the stations from the Oregon Coast I used to hear 11 years ago are strangely difficult to hear or log today -- I think it's because MW conditions have been so mediocre since the last solar cycle flattened out in late 2016. There's no other reason for a station like KSWB, which was a nightly regular, and hasn't cut its power, to disappear completely for several years.
But KNPT Newport was always audible on 1310, with talk and some local programming, even during the Solar Minimum. They ran Jim Bohannon's show (later Rich Valdes), and other talk shows at night. I often would hear KNPT early in the morning, and hear the local announcers give the Lincoln County news and the weather reports. It would be 28 degrees F here in Seattle overnight and the KNPT weather report said it would be 50F or 60F in Newport that day. It was like a reminder of how things were when we'd travel there when I was a kid.
And KNPT seemed to have enough local advertisements that it looked like the revenue would be adequate for keeping the lights on, including spots for stores in Newport and nearby resort town Lincoln City. That's a combined, Lincoln County trading area of maybe 20,000-30,000 people. They seemed to have enough money to have a popular Seattle area voiceover guy (Joe Michaels) do their IDs and liners.
But the revenue being adequate was apparently not the case. Just as in the case of ESPN Yakima 1460, KRLC 1350 Lewiston, and KMED/KYVL Medford 1440, the recent downturn in advertising revenues -- especially for traditional media like radio, TV, and newspapers -- has socked it to yet another small town radio station. Even some big city AMs are gone. KZIZ 1560 in the Tacoma area of the Seattle-Tacoma metro went off the air last year. They were playing Punjabi programming. There was a rumor they were going to install an FM translator. That never happened. The pandemic, plus the travails of keeping an AM station on the air, did them in.
KMIA 1210 in Auburn, maybe 15 miles South of me, went off the air temporarily mid-pandemic, until a Spanish language religious organization took them over. KKPZ 1330 Portland, a religious station, pulled the plug during the pandemic. The religious teaching programs have been tightening their belts -- because their donors are tightening theirs. A lot of the religious programs are going online, and leaving radio behind.
It's tough to run a radio station that isn't a highly rated, FM music station in a major metro, and it's been a bit worse, even for them, post-pandemic. I've even heard some odd and bizarre ads on some highly rated, local FMers recently -- the kind of commercials that some radio fans make fun of, spots that they think only belong on late night AM radio. It's obvious that even some FM stations are going for whatever they can get, revenue wise. However, for small town media, largely dependent on small town businesses (who may be hard up for revenues themselves), it's apparent that the local advertising business model is in trouble.
And now KNPT is a victim of the changed economy for local radio, post-pandemic.
Recently it was announced that on January 1st, 2024, KNPT would be off the air, permanently. They announced that they are having financial issues, and no one wants to buy the station and take over operations. The announcement indicated that a couple other stations in the company's cluster of local stations would also possibly not survive.
When I listened to them over a couple nights in late December, an announcement said that KNPT's advertising revenue had dropped by over 50% since the end of the Pandemic, and with interest rates going up as they have been, they couldn't maintain financing to stay in business.
'LIVE AND LOCAL', AND LOCAL RADIO IN GENERAL, IS IN DANGER
It's sad to see these smaller media outlets like KNPT disappearing, but it's a sign of the times. AM radio isn't as popular today as it was even 10 years ago. Local radio in general is losing out to national syndication, social media like Twitter (X), Instagram and Facebook, and national and worldwide internet entertainment.
Just like online news media, social media, and online classified ads killed local newspapers, the present online-based revenue and media model is killing other local media -- and it's decimating small town radio stations like KNPT. Big city radio isn't too far behind, actually. The internet is not going to stop with small town radio.
FM is having similar issues, for that matter, and TV's existence also is staring at the cliff. Younger people don't listen to "radio", nor do they watch "TV", much less read a "newspaper" (whether paper or online). Everything is internet videos, streams, and podcasts -- whatever you can get on your phone -- with very little of it locally based.
And the advertising revenue just isn't making it. The big advertising agencies, naturally, couldn't give a shit less about AM, or even FM in many cases. They definitely don't give a shit about small town media. In fact, there are huge swaths of demographics that the big advertising agencies, that are vital to radio, avoid: and those avoided demos are both age-based, location-based (i.e. rural), economically-based (i.e. poor), and ethnic-based. It's one reason that there are segments of the US population that have no radio stations that cater to them, unless it's an AM station, or maybe a public radio station -- and even those may be seeing some financial problems.
The big ad agencies have their favorite demographics, demos that their beloved research tells them is an easy sell, and that's all they want to reach.
The rest of the people can go take a hike.
However, it's not just their fault that radio, and local media, is in decline. The consolidation of retail and the movement of retail from the brick and mortar store to online has also taken its toll on radio stations. When I was a kid, you'd hear more spots on popular radio stations from local stores. Nowadays, many of those local stores are out of business, replaced by huge, national box store chains that don't often, if ever, advertise on local radio -- or, they've been replaced by online retail, which never advertises on radio.
It's like the perfect storm for small town stations like KNPT.
My Realistic DX-390, which for years I used to troll the SW broadcast and ham bands for all sorts of signals. I never used it for AM and FM, however. It's a great FM receiver, with good performance on FM. But it does surprisingly well on the MW/AM band -- you just need an external loop to bring in the distant signals -- at least in my location.
The morning I posted this article I heard KNPT alone on the channel (1310), with readable signals. The station does get out. Sadly, it's not enough to keep them on the air anymore.
IT'S ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF RADIO'S PROBLEM IN GENERAL;
AND EVEN STREAMING CAN'T SEEM TO SAVE IT
It's odd. Just a few weeks ago I wrote an article about three PNW stations shutting down -- ESPN Yakima 1460, Medford's KMED/KYVL 1440, and Lewiston's KRLC 1350. But this particular station shutdown actually hurts.
If a station like KNPT, which is the main station in a city of 10,000, and which is the center of a trading area that maybe covers 50 miles of tourist beaches and other attractions -- and has an FM translator that covers all three cities in the trading area -- can't survive, what does that say for radio in general?
There were also online streams available for KNPT, on TuneIn and Streema, and maybe a couple other sites.
This stream for KNPT worked, at least in late December.
I couldn't get this particular stream to work, when I tried it in late December.
Here is TuneIn's page for KNPT. In late December, when I checked it out, it showed the logo, and said "This Station Is No Longer Available."
The FM translator, located about 10-15 miles north of town, which covers basically the same area KNPT-AM covers, couldn't save KNPT. Obviously, FM translators aren't always AM station lifesavers.
And it looks like even the streaming didn't save KNPT. What does that say about streaming saving radio?
And then there are the memories. Dad always wanted to find agates. I remember he and Mom would slowly pore through the gravelly parts of the beach near the Yaquina Bay Lighthouse, searching for agates, and never finding anything but small, colored rocks, and maybe some sea-burnished quartz pebbles. They had fun doing it, though, and the Oregon Coast was always a great place to be. We'd have campfires at night at the state parks, and the weather was good enough to enjoy them without getting rained on. We'd also wade in the ocean, and sometimes collect seashells and driftwood.
I'd always have my radio on at night, seeing what was to be heard.
But years hence it seems that even a touristy area like Newport can't keep a local, news and talk radio station alive. KNPT had an FM translator in nearby Depoe Bay, Oregon -- just up the road a bit on Highway 101. But even that FM translator wasn't enough to keep them -- and a couple other stations in the cluster -- afloat.
For what it's worth, as I post this on December 30th, KNPT is still on the air. Just this morning, they were in on 1310 with a readable signal, even as late as 10 a.m., on my Realistic DX-390 and loop, fading in and out with nice, clear audio.
Small town radio is slowly going the way of the Dodo, folks. Get 'em while you can.
So long, KNPT. You gave the town of Newport and surrounding areas of Lincoln County 75 good years of news, information, weather, and entertainment. 1310 won't be any better off without you, and it definitely won't sound the same.
AUSTRALIAN CRAWL
I shall close this article with a high note, of sorts: a music vid. And what better music to raise one's spirits than some good Australian rock? After all, the best rock music in the world came from Australia.
The band here is Australian Crawl. They were a popular band in Oz in the very late 1970s and the 1980s. They apparently started out in the surf pubs of southern Melbourne, and then went national after developing a rabid following in their home metro. Their US compilation album, Semantics, which I got at a used record store in 1989 or so, was excellent -- and it had this song. The US Semantics was a compilation of maybe one or two Oz LPs' top tracks (most from their Oz LP Sons Of Beaches -- but re-recorded, I think) and all the tracks from their Oz Semantics EP, from which this track, The Night, was taken.
The kind of music Australian Crawl played was a curious mixture of reggae rhythms (like this track), surf rock, and Australian hard rock and pop-rock. The three guitarists all played Fender guitars -- adding to the surf-rock like feel. But this was way cooler than surf rock. It is definite Oz rock music -- i.e., kickass.
Singer James Reyne was a great singer. I never could understand his words, of course. I just thought it was because he was singing in a strong Aussie accent, and I'm an American. As a fan of Oz music, I can understand a certain amount of Oz accent, but sometimes when it's thick it throws me off. But it wasn't just me, not in this case. Most of the fans on YouTube who are Australian say they can't understand what James Reyne is singing, either.
Here is a track off Sons Of Beaches, their biggest selling LP in Australia. The song is Letter From Zimbabwe, with a catchy guitar riff, naturally played on three different Fenders. It's about an Oz friend of the singer's who went to Zimbabwe just after Rhodesia folded and the country was about to gain international acceptance. It might have something to do with the war there. Not sure -- after all, I can't understand half of what James Reyne is singing. :-)
Enjoy, and to all of my readers, Happy New Year's.
Peace.
C.C., December 30th, 2024.
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