KDUN Radio 1030 AM, and KGRG-1 AM, 1330, Go Off The Air Permanently

Two separate radio stations in my region of the US have gone off the air, permanently, due to financial issues, as well as costs of maintaining their infrastructure.

The first station, KDUN, Reedsport, Oregon, had recently been re-vamped, rebuilt, and made a good go of it, trying to regain an audience after being off the air for several years. I had been hearing KDUN over the past several months, with decent signals, playing Adult Contemporary music, and frequent ID's as Southern Oregon's biggest independent radio station.

KDUN was owned and run by Delilah Rene, a popular US night time radio personality. She got her broadcasting start at KDUN in the late 1970's, and decided to buy her first station and try to make it viable.

It didn't work. Reedsport is a small city on the Southern Oregon Coast, and the surrounding area is not heavily populated. It is a tourist city and has some natural resource jobs, with KDUN's signal reaching Florence, a city maybe 20 miles north (8500 people) and Coos Bay, maybe 20-30 miles south (20K people), but a local market of 5,000 people simply is not enough to keep a radio station going these days. Even if you count in the other 28K people from Florence and Coos Bay, it's just not enough business to support a station like KDUN (Coos Bay has several of its own stations on the airwaves).

So just over a week ago, Delilah turned in KDUN's license. The plug has been permanently pulled.

Online, some radio hobbyists say that 'KDUN didn't have an FM translator', and that was the problem. Actually, lack of an FM translator was not the problem. The poor radio sales marketplace is the problem, and if you're running a station in a small city like Reedsport, that also can be a problem.

Small town radio in the US is disappearing for that reason. The money just isn't there.

By the way, KDUN had an internet stream.

THE STREAM DID NOT SAVE THE STATION.

Remember Radio Disney? They had a stream. In fact, they went ALL ONLINE, the ultimate, intended destination for all radio stations these days.

The stream did not save them. Today their website is a 404.

This also was the case for several other failed radio stations I have reported on over the past 2-3 years. KNPT Newport OR had a translator and a stream. It failed. KUTI Yakima WA had a stream. It failed. KDWN Las Vegas NV had a stream. It failed. The 6 or 7 AM stations shut down by Bell Media in Canada in 2023 all had streams on the Canadian IHeart platform. They all failed. Radio Disney had a stream. It failed.

Having a translator or internet stream -- while a smart radio business practice these days -- will not save a station in a bad business climate.

The fact is: the Radio business climate is very bad. The money is simply not rolling in like it was in the 1980's and 1990's. 

KGRG-1 GOES OFF THE AIR, PERMANENTLY

KGRG-1 is a station on 1330 kHz, based out of Auburn, WA, about 15 miles south of me. I used to tune into KGRG-1 while working out on my bench press during the afternoons, because they played a lot of Classic Alternative music. I could hear Nirvana LP cuts, Mudhoney, Pearl Jam B-sides, and other cool Grunge and alternative on the station, which had a listenable signal up here, even though it was on the AM band.

KGRG-FM played similar music, but their FM signal was not audible here.

Both have gone off the air, because of budget cuts at Green River College, the institution where the stations were located. All the KGRG licenses are to be turned back in to the FCC in June. Right now, when I tune in 1330, I don't hear KGRG-1 at all. During the daytime, I hear nothing but hiss and static.

KGRG has, or had, a stream. The stream played whatever music was on KGRG-FM or AM.

The stream, of course, didn't save KGRG. Being on FM did not save KGRG, either.

Here is the Green River College's board report, showing why they pulled the plug on KGRG-1 and KGRG, including its stream.:

https://www.greenriver.edu/campus/media/documents/bot-agendas/20250515-board-meeting-packet.pdf

Of course, a college station doesn't depend on advertising to exist, so the current poor advertising business climate isn't affecting them. But the College believes that they can't justify having a Radio and Journalism program in an age where anybody can have a podcast by just using their IPhone and internet connection, and anybody with an internet connection and a keyboard can be a 'journalist'.

And nobody who wants a lasting, viable career takes journalism classes anymore. You don't need a degree in journalism to be an online influencer. All you need is a smartphone, or laptop computer, and an internet connection, and you can create your 'content' that way. No degrees or extra education necessary.

I don't say these things to disparage journalism students. I minored in Journalism, and excelled at it. The student newspaper whose issues I edited was #1 in the US. I was, and still am, proud of my ability to write and research news and other issues. I think Journalism is pretty important. 

The rest of the world, however, doesn't feel the same way.

Journalism, like Radio, is a dying industry. Journalism employment levels peaked in the 1980's, and they are one tenth what they were in 1985. And College Radio in the US is at a crossroads, with declining numbers of students wanting to work in Radio. A lot of younger people don't really know what Radio is. They listen to Pandora and Spotify. They view podcasts on the internet, and 'media' to them is TikTok and YouTube. The glamourous image and relevant appeal that Radio once had is gone.

It's also a tough time for colleges, as in the case of Green River, being that Gen Z is smaller than the Millennials, and the number of college students nationwide is in decline from former levels. A lot of College courses no longer have relevance in today's screwed up job market, where 30% of job listings are fake ('ghost jobs'), careers are short-lived, job security is a joke, and wages often do not keep up with inflation. Throw in the high levels of student debt, it's making college less palatable for a lot of younger people.

However, it's still very sad to see these stations get their plugs pulled, with their signals yanked off the air.

THE END OF AN ERA

So long, KDUN, and so long, KGRG-1. I enjoyed listening to your programming. I enjoyed hearing Mudhoney and Pearl Jam while working out in the early afternoons on KGRG-1, and I enjoyed hearing the Southern Oregon Coast at night while tuning in KDUN.

You have quite a few good stations whose ranks you've now joined -- Radio Disney, KDWN, KNPT, Funny 1060 CKMX -- all of them -- they provided entertainment and information, as your stations did. They provided good listening, and in most cases did their best to serve their communities.

Unfortunately, that simply is not enough.

As my co-workers said when we were all laid off from our Radio jobs in late 2006 -- and none of us ever worked in the field again -- "IT WAS A GOOD RUN, WASN'T IT." 

I suppose it was.

Peace.

C.C. May 24th, 2025.

Shortwave Radio is Dying; otherwise, All Is Well. More later.

 

A Radio blog post needs a pic of a radio, correct? This is my XHDATA D-220. which I got on Halloween, 2024. Decent radio. Will take a wire on SW, and will DX on MW with a loop. Decent emergency radio. Tuning both the MW and SW bands can be tricky, but it will pull in stations. The orange ones will glow in the dark, as you can tell. Seemed to fit Halloween, really.

This is just a note to say I'm doing OK overall. Still in decent health. I haven't posted any new blog articles here because I sadly have neglected my blog lately. Some of it is trying to straighten out finances left over from my late mother's estate. Other issues are just the work it takes to put out a blog article. It is indeed a bit of work, and I tend sometimes to put it off.

I also have been trying to finish a new fiction novel, and that also takes up a considerable amount of writing time.

All that aside, I am well, my two cats Tigger and Racofrats are well. I have a couple additional portable radios since my last blog post, a Tecsun PL330 and a small XHDATA D220, and a spare Grundig G2 that was for sale, factory-refurbished, on Amazon for a few weeks. I got one of the 15 they had remaining. It's a great radio, works a bit differently from my first G2, in that the bandwidth is a bit wider so it's more pleasing on MW and SW, and it also will take a 25 ft. wire, which helps bring in stations with a bit more signal.

And it will RECORD. Which is the main thing, because SHORTWAVE RADIO IS DYING.

It's a combination of stations going off the air -- VOA, Marti, etc., are gone, and who knows if they will come back. Even World's Last Chance Radio on 9330 kHz, which used to be on most of the night here from 7 p.m. to 1 a.m. or so -- both in English and Portuguese -- seems to have cut back some hours.

Some other US domestic broadcasters like WRMI and WWCR seem to have operated at reduced schedules compared to 5 years ago. It may be a combination of that and crappy ionospheric conditions, but there is less to hear than there was in 2022.

I think that a lot of broadcasters, and the programs which use SW broadcasters, are running out of money. Just a guess, but it would fit the present day economy where worldwide inflation is still a factor to many people's wallets.

So I am using my new G2 to record what I hear. My old G2's 4GB of internal audio memory is full. The new one has over 67 hours of record time left on it.

Not only is Shortwave Broadcasting dying, but the HF ham bands are dead half the time. For being such boasting braggarts -- 'you SWL's just listen to 200 KW stations, we hams have to WORK the weak ones!' -- hams are pretty much lazy-asses who DO NOT USE THEIR SPECTRUM.

It's not just that the Solar Cycle is a weak one (less eUV to ionise the Ionosphere), it's the issue of hams not using the HF bands as much as they did in the 2010's, the 2000's, the 1990's, 1980's, etc. They're just not using the bands as much. I guess they like their internet more than switching on their Icom 7300 and getting on the air.

Maybe they trust their waterfalls too much, and are just lazy about making contacts. I don't know how many times I've read comments by a ham talking about using their stupid waterfall display to find contacts instead of just tuning and listening for the weak ones that might not look so great on a waterfall, but could be usable DX contacts.

I know there are some hams who worked other stations on 10 Meters when it was in a few months back, and they were actually trying to make the best of the propagation -- but when I tune the HF ham bands, even on good propagation days and evenings the bands are surprisingly DEAD compared to 11, 22, 33 years ago, during past Solar Cycle peaks Even when the prop is up, there are swaths of 20 Meters that are vacant.

I know some hams online think this past Solar Cycle has been great. They'll post graphs of Sunspot numbers, not realising that Sunspots do not make the ionosphere work. EUV makes the ionosphere work, and even if Sunspots are UP, if the eUV is DOWN, the ionosphere is going to be weaker. And eUV is down from 1996, it's been gradually dropping.

But the 'Solar Cycle 25 is Great' myth persists. Even some veteran hams have told me that myth online. But they obviously haven't checked their old logbooks to recognise the relative absense of activity on the bands today compared to back in 1995, or 2003.

Some of the problem might be that they're all on FT8. Which means that eventually the governments can reduce the HF ham bands to maybe 5 frequencies, FT8 only, and give the rest of the band spectrum to HF Traders and the like.

Use it or lose it, guys. So far, it looks like you're willing to gamble on losing it. Oh well.

Either way, I'm preparing for the inevitable downturn in propagation, and the fact that on HF at least, there will be much less to hear as the years progress. That means I'm recording more of what I hear, and also trying out DSP SSB radios to see if they will be useful in the future when the propagation recedes, because DSP seems to be helpful in RESOLVING weak signals. And I think the years ahead we're going to be hearing weak signals, mostly.

Tigger the Cat. He's 18 years old. Still in good health, thank God. I make sure I pet him more and more each day. He still hunts rats and mice. He is a survivor. I got him when he was a tiny kitten in March, 2007. Amazing how the years go by.

My cat Racofrats. I've had him since he was a kitten, September 2011. He's doing well, thank God. He has a tiny meow for being a large cat.

Timmy the Cat, he was a great little pal. He took ill rather quickly and then after getting stronger, he died on me on March 1st. Pet your cats, folks, and treasure them. You never know how long you will have them around.

All that said, I will post some articles over the next few weeks. 

Until then, Peace.

C.C. May 9th, 2025.