Radio This Week Back Then #46: December 1-7
Seattle (KEXP-FM, KPLZ-FM), Vancouver (CFMI-FM), and Reykjavík (Gull Bylgjan, X977, Kiss FM)
What was on the radio this week…back then. This is a weekly visit of radio audio from this week in past years for those that enjoy radio history, those working in radio looking for promotional ideas, or stations looking to re-find lost audio of their heritage. If you enjoy these weekly audio rewinds, they take a lot of time to put together, so please do me a favor, subscribe, and share and pass it on. Thank you! A searchable and sortable index of all the audio is located on the Aircheck Index page.
This week back in 2016, I made my first trip to Iceland (highly recommended if you don’t have it on your travel bucket list). Two years ago, I was briefly in Seattle and Vancouver. So, this week is all from those trips:
Seattle | AAA KEXP-FM, hot AC KPLZ-FM “Star 101.5” (2022)
Vancouver | classic rock CFMI-FM “Rock 101” (2022)
Reykjavík | soft oldies Gull Bylgjan, modern rock X977, CHR Kiss FM (2016)
About 98% of Icelanders can speak English as it is taught as a second language in their education system. They tend to spend Icelandic to each other, but with only a small percentage of people in the world outside the country able to speak Icelandic, they learn English to interact with tourists and to the rest of the world. Much of the media that is imported into the country is in English, so the radio stations have lots of English-language music.
Happy reading and listening!
Related: Seattle/Tacoma
I flew into Seattle during the first week of December two years ago for a short visit there and Vancouver — a kind of NHL road trip as I got Kraken and Canucks games in that week.
In the time I recorded this aircheck two years ago and today, KEXP-FM gained and killed off a commercial AAA rival. In February 2023, country KNUC 98.9 flipped to AAA KPNW-FM. It proved no match for non-commercial KEXP-FM in the ratings, and KPNW-FM flipped back to country as “98-9 the Bull” on April 1st this year. More on that below in the section on KPLZ-FM…
The other change over the last two years is that KEXP-FM bought the assets of the former KREV 92.7 in the San Francisco market and earlier this year flipped it to a simulcast, with local inserts, as KEXC “KEXP Bay Area.”
Related: Seattle/Tacoma, KPLZ, 101.5 Seattle
Since this recording two years ago, KPLZ-FM ended a three decade run as hot AC “Star 101-5.” As noted above, AAA KPNW-FM flipped back to country on 1 April earlier this year. A few hours later on the same date, KPLZ-FM made its own flip to gold-based country as “101.5 Hank FM.” So far, both KPLZ-FM and KPNW-FM are trailing incumbent KKWF 100.7 “100.7 the Wolf,” but for the race for #2 country, KPLZ-FM has consistently been ahead of KPNW-FM.
Related: Vancouver
Imaged as “Rock 101, Vancouver’s Greatest Hits,” CFMI-FM and its repeater CFMI-FM 90.7 Whistler are more classic rock than what classic hits typically sounds like in the US. It also plays some tracks a bit atypical of classic rock stations in the US — Depeche Mode/”Personal Jesus,” for example — plus the seasoning of a few Canadian chart hits from old Canadian bands that weren’t big hits south of the border.
The country of Iceland has less than 400,000 people living there, with most living in the capital Reykjavík. If the Reykjavík metro were in the United States, Nielsen would rank it somewhere around the 190th largest radio market. As it is the capital of a nation with its own distinct culture and vibe, Reykjavík radio does combine that with the charms of small market radio.
Re-listening to these Reykjavík airchecks from 2016, one noticeable difference from US commercial outlets is the ad breaks — many commercials are just 10, 15, or 20 seconds rather than the more typical 60 second slog. So, ad breaks tend to be just a couple of minutes and it’s back to the music. The ad breaks also tend to be abrupt — song ends and first ad begins.
Gull Bylgjan is basically the Icelandic take on soft oldies. In English, “Bylgjan” translates to “Wave,” so soft oldies “Gull Bylgjan” is “the Golden Wave.” Musically, the songs on this 2016 aircheck range from 28 to 52 years old at the time, with 40 years old as the average. Most of the songs are English-language hits from the US or the UK. A couple of Icelandic oldies are tossed into the mix for local flavor.
Outside some streaming links, there doesn’t seem to be any current web presence for Gull Bylgjan around these days…just for its sister AC Bylgjan 98.9. Bylgjan is under the same corporate owner as X977 below. Based on the streaming feeds, Gull Bylgjan is now 1980s-centered these days.
Branded on-air as “X9-7-7” (“X níu sjö sjö”), this is a pretty cool little radio station because it is exactly what you would think an alternative rocker in Iceland would be: a little hipper and deeper musically than most US commercial alternative stations, and it has local acts in the mix.
I recorded about an hour of X, and in the course of that hour, they played three Icelandic artists — Mugjson, Prins Póló, and The Viking Giant Show. I can’t think of any US commercial modern rock outlet, even in markets with vibrant local music scenes like Los Angeles, Seattle, and Austin, that would mix in that much local content as part of regularly programming. At best, if local music acts are featured on a US commercial outlet, it is usually the form of a dedicated hour on a Sunday night.
Almost all the music is in English, including two of the three Icelandic acts, so it is perfectly accessible if you do not speak Icelandic.
The only song in Icelandic is “Jólakveðja” (“Christmas Greetings,” apparently in English) by Icelandic signer-songwriter Prins Póló. Sadly, he passed away two years ago at age 45 from state 4 cancer. From an odd connection among stations this week, a Google search on the artist turns up a 2014 live performance for KEXP.
If X977 sounds native, Kiss FM sounds pretty Americanized, down to the generic “Kiss FM” brand. The hits largely look like a melding of the US and UK pop charts.
As always, the logos and other intellectual property belong to the stations. The recordings were made from over the air broadcasts.