KRLC, Lewiston, Idaho's "Hometown Radio" station, a station whose plug was pulled about a year ago and recently had its license deleted, has been burned to the ground in a Fire Training exercise. The Fire training exercise took place in late November.
Over the past several years since the Pandemic ended I have written about several AM (and FM) stations in my region of the US going off the airwaves, and in those articles I have included the fact that many of those stations had FM translators, FM sister stations, and several had radio streams on the internet -- a factor that is supposedly necessary to 'save AM'.
KRLC, Lewiston, Idaho was one of those stations. KRLC 1350 was usually heard nightly here in the Seattle area up until it went off the air about midway through last year. Even though we have a strong local (KKMO 1360) here in the metro, KRLC could still be heard right next to it, playing Classic Country music.
In the 1960's and 70's, KRLC was a Top 40 station, but they switched to Country some time in the late 1970's, and then Classic Country about a decade or more later.
Lewiston is in Northern Idaho, and it's right across the Snake River from Clarkston, Washington -- the two are 'twin cities', and they both serve an area of dry wheatfield farmland, as well as some orchard farming. Lewiston is known as Idaho's 'seaport', being that it is on a section of the Snake River that is navigable all the way to the Pacific Ocean.
Even though the Lewiston-Clarkston metro region is around 50,000 or more, there just wasn't enough revenue to keep KRLC on the air. And the Pandemic economy finished the station off, just as it finished off KNPT Newport OR, KBCH Lincoln City OR, KUTI Yakima WA, KMED Medford OR, KKPZ Portland OR, KDUN Reedsport OR, and even big city KDWN Las Vegas, NV -- all stations which I've written about here when they were taken off the air.
In KRLC's case, one night I tuned in to 1350 to hear nothing, and then I looked KRLC up and found out they went off the air. They recently had their license deleted at the FCC.
A couple other stations, like KKOV 1550 Vancouver WA, the former "Sunny 1550", are silent and their futures are uncertain. Even an Asian language format couldn't save KKOV. It's been silent since the Pandemic. KZIZ 1560, a small station in Sumner, WA, just 20 miles south of me has been off the air for more than a year. A Punjabi / South Asian format apparently couldn't save it. They went off the air around the time the Pandemic happened.
It's tough for Radio all over -- and especially AM Radio, although FM is not exempt.
You can also add a bunch of Canadian AM'ers whose plugs have been pulled -- also done in by the Pandemic economy, as well as the changing economics of Radio -- CKMX 1060 Calgary, CFTE Vancouver, CKGO Vancouver, CKST Vancouver, CFRN Edmonton, and several others.
Of the American stations I mention here, all of them, except possibly KKPZ in Portland, had streams. The streams did not save the stations. Most of them also had FM translators, and KNPT Newport was part of a group of stations on the Oregon Coast. All had their plugs pulled.
Photo courtesy RadioWorld dot com & Big Country News
Now KRLC is gone -- and even more, the station's building was burned down in a Fire Department training exercise, in November (I didn't find out about the building being burned down until recently). It was an inglorious fate for a station that served the city and region of Lewiston for 80 years. The once proud server of Classic Country to the wheatland region of the Palouse is now nothing more than ashes.
It all went up in flames. One wonders if that is the ultimate future of the industry I worked in for 20 years -- for it all to end up going up in flames.
Here is a news article on the burning down of KRLC.:
It's sad, in a way, but it's also indicative of the ultimate fate of probably every on-air Radio station in the United States. Eventually, when everything goes online, there won't be any Radio stations left, and the majority of remaining, online-only stations will disappear as well, because the internet is one vast content resource with endless competition for eyes and ears.
Online Radio is promising, but the promise just won't hold out for most who believe that going online-only will save Radio stations. Online radio stations have to find advertising or funding, just like On-Air stations do. And then you have the issue of Digital Royalties for the music played.
An example of this hit the radio press recently. There is an online station in San Francisco -- one of the most concentrated populations in the United States -- called HydeFM that is struggling to stay alive, even though it reportedly has a 'loyal local following'.
Here is an article on HydeFM's challenges.:
Even online, it's tough for a content operation like a streaming radio station to make enough money to survive.
We live in interesting times.
IN OTHER LIFE...
In other life, everything is plodding along. My internet went wonky last Saturday. Then it went good for 5 days. My cat Bear is getting used to me. She likes the bagpipes -- only if I play them downstairs, though. But she knows that when I play the bagpipes, soon enough I'll be feeding her. She is a very skittish cat, so I wanted to ensure that she associated bagpipes with a good thing. That way she wouldn't be so scared of the noise.
THE SHORTWAVE BANDS ARE 'DEAD, JIM'
DXing has been spotty lately. The SW bands are mostly dead, compared to where they should be -- being that we are still technically in a Solar peak period. I heard T88SM, a ham station out of Palau, on CW (Morse Code) two afternoons ago on 21025 kHz in the 15 Meter ham band. The rest of the band was basically dead, though. I heard 8P5AA out of Barbados on 10 Meters the same afternoon (28470 kHz, around 2058 UTC -- about 1 p.m. here), and a few faint whispers of East Coast US hams trying to talk to him.
Earlier that day I heard Brazil, PV8AL (?) on 28350, but I couldn't hear the US guys trying to reach him. The rest of the 10 Meter band was dead.
It seems that sometimes there is ionospheric propagation to various regions of the world, but no one is on. Then again, last night the SW and HF ham bands were basically nothing but static with a few faint carriers and just whispers of audio on WRMI and WWCR.
Propagation lately could be summed up thusly.:
"It's dead, Jim." (a take on a famous Star Trek quote).
SEEMS LIKE THE SOLAR MINIMUM IS STARTING ALREADY
This Solar Cycle is playing out the way I sort of thought it would. It's depressing, in a way, but it's reality, and with reality, one must adapt and survive. One way I've attempted to 'adapt' is get a DSP SSB radio, and of the three of those I've got this year (Tecsun PL-330, Raddy RF760, and XHDATA D808), the D808 is the best for raw SSB and CW signal performance, and the Tecsun is the best for SSB readability.
I'm going to put up an outdoor wire to try to hear more when the REAL solar minimum hits -- and I think it's going to hit next year. In fact, I think it's starting to hit us already. I have the space for an outdoor wire. I just have to figure out a way to put one up again. I used to have a 100 foot wire, but it went down in a windstorm in 2005 or so. My next outdoor one will be shorter.
Here's hoping all of you are doing well and having an OK start to 2026.
Peace.
C.C., January 14th, 2026.
