Previously, I posted a flashback for Seattle/Tacoma showing the radio ratings for Spring of 1977. That was an interesting time because Top 40 was just starting to appear on the FM dial and album rock was beginning to grow in popularity. So FM was starting to become a real factor – but, nonetheless, the top five stations were all on the AM dial. Now, let’s look at what’s changed in three years by checking out the ratings for the Spring of 1980. It’s a personally significant time for me, because I graduated from high school that year, so this is the radio stations that were popular in the last few months of my senior year. What’s interesting here is that two FM stations are now in the top five. For younger listeners, it is notable that the FM Top 40 stations have taken a pretty big chunk from the audience of the AM Top 40s, and album rock KISW is now at number 4. 26 stations are listed:
1 KIRO(AM) 8.9 News/talk. Continuing a long, successful run in the market.
2 KOMO(AM) 7.8 Full-Service Adult Contemporary or MOR (listed as PA, for "Pop/adult). I don’t know if they had gone towards more of an adult contemporary direction by this time or if they were still MOR – but it’s interesting that they’ve hung on to most of the audience that they had three years earlier (when they were in first place with an 8.9 share).
3 KSEA(FM) 5.9 Beautiful Music
4 KISW 5.7 Album Rock – and still in the format 44 years later.
5 KJR(AM) 4.9 Top 40 (listed as R, for "rock"). Still the highest rated Top 40 station in the market, but just barely. And definitely not the powerhouse that they’d been just a couple years previously. In 1981, “The New 93” (later KUBE) came on the air and KJR’s decline accelerated.
6T KPLZ(FM) 4.6 Top 40 (listed as R, for "rock"). While they’re ahead of KYYX in this book, the two stations had swapped positions a couple times in the past year. At this point, though, it appears that KPLZ had recovered from the anti-disco backlash (in the latter part of 1978 and first half of 1979, they’d leaned very heavily on disco music).
6T KZAM 4.6 Album Rock (but noticeably softer than KISW and KZOK). I’m surprised the ratings were this high, as I had never perceived KZAM as being all that popular at the time.
8 KVI(AM) 4 News/talk (but not sure that is accurate). It’s notable that this station had lost half of its audience versus my previous listing from 1977, when it had an 8.3 share and ranked second in the market.
9 KBRD(FM) 3.8 Beautiful Music. Impressive ratings for a Tacoma station; per Wikipedia, this station had upgraded from Class A to Class C the previous year, but my memory says that upgrade actually happened later in 1980.
10T KEZX(FM) 3.7 Beautiful Music
10T KYYX(FM) 3.7 Top 40 (listed as R, for "rock"). They’d just hired a new program director who had previously worked in Anchorage, and he’d made some pretty significant changes to the way the station sounded. Those changes caused me to listen less, but the ratings seem to be in the same range as before so apparently I was in the minority.
10T KZOK(FM) 3.7 Album Rock
13 KING(AM) 3.4 Adult Contemporary (listed as PA, for "Pop/adult"). KING had finally and clearly lost in the Top 40 wars and flipped to a soft rock format with low key DJs. They were also serving as a test bed for the Kahn AM Stereo system around this time, because I remember they ran promos on the air telling listeners that we could listen in stereo by detuning two separate radios – one below their center frequency, and the other above. One thing that this station shares in common with KVI(AM) is that it lost about half its audience versus 1977, when it had a 6.7 share and ranked fifth (just below KJR, at a 6.8).
14 KMPS-FM 3.1 Country
15 KNBQ(FM) 2.7 Top 40 (listed as R, for "rock"). This is the first time that KNBQ beats KTAC in the Tacoma Top 40 battle. KNBQ had ditched the automation in 1979, but they’d also gone to a strange music mix where they played everything except disco. They abandoned that approach in favor of a balanced approach in early 1980, and it paid off in the ratings. Note that the 2.7 share is mostly from Pierce County, as KNBQ did not put a great signal into Seattle at this point; while they’d boosted power to 100 kw, they were running that power from only 370 feet HAAT.
16 KIXI(AM) 2.6 Beautiful Music
17T KIXI-FM 2.5 Adult Contemporary (listed as PA, for "Pop/adult")
17T KMPS(AM) 2.5 Country
19 KING-FM 2.1 Classical
20 KBIQ(FM) 2 Religion
21T KTAC(AM) 1.8 Top 40 (listed as R, for "rock"). The beginning of the end for KTAC – the audience that they’d lost to KNBQ since the last book never came back.
21T KYAC(AM) 1.8 Urban Contemporary (listed as B, for "Black"). The only commercial station aiming at a Black audience (but I remember that a number of Asian classmates did listen to this station, so they didn’t just get a Black audience); a 1.8 share is surprisingly decent considering how small the Black population was in the market and how crappy their signal was. They were shared time with KWSU in Pullman and operated from midnight to sunset.
23 KGDN(AM) 1.5 Religion
24 KAYO(AM) 1.3 News
25 KWYZ(AM) 1.2 Country
26 KXA(AM) 1 Classical (not sure that is accurate, as the station was bought and switched formats around this time)
Between the previous post (for the Spring of 1997) and this one, I hope that I've provided an interesting perspective on Puget Sound area radio in this time period. For me, it's also personal -- that last post was from just before I started high school and this post is just before I graduated. And like many teenagers back then, radio was a major factor in my life.
1 KIRO(AM) 8.9 News/talk. Continuing a long, successful run in the market.
2 KOMO(AM) 7.8 Full-Service Adult Contemporary or MOR (listed as PA, for "Pop/adult). I don’t know if they had gone towards more of an adult contemporary direction by this time or if they were still MOR – but it’s interesting that they’ve hung on to most of the audience that they had three years earlier (when they were in first place with an 8.9 share).
3 KSEA(FM) 5.9 Beautiful Music
4 KISW 5.7 Album Rock – and still in the format 44 years later.
5 KJR(AM) 4.9 Top 40 (listed as R, for "rock"). Still the highest rated Top 40 station in the market, but just barely. And definitely not the powerhouse that they’d been just a couple years previously. In 1981, “The New 93” (later KUBE) came on the air and KJR’s decline accelerated.
6T KPLZ(FM) 4.6 Top 40 (listed as R, for "rock"). While they’re ahead of KYYX in this book, the two stations had swapped positions a couple times in the past year. At this point, though, it appears that KPLZ had recovered from the anti-disco backlash (in the latter part of 1978 and first half of 1979, they’d leaned very heavily on disco music).
6T KZAM 4.6 Album Rock (but noticeably softer than KISW and KZOK). I’m surprised the ratings were this high, as I had never perceived KZAM as being all that popular at the time.
8 KVI(AM) 4 News/talk (but not sure that is accurate). It’s notable that this station had lost half of its audience versus my previous listing from 1977, when it had an 8.3 share and ranked second in the market.
9 KBRD(FM) 3.8 Beautiful Music. Impressive ratings for a Tacoma station; per Wikipedia, this station had upgraded from Class A to Class C the previous year, but my memory says that upgrade actually happened later in 1980.
10T KEZX(FM) 3.7 Beautiful Music
10T KYYX(FM) 3.7 Top 40 (listed as R, for "rock"). They’d just hired a new program director who had previously worked in Anchorage, and he’d made some pretty significant changes to the way the station sounded. Those changes caused me to listen less, but the ratings seem to be in the same range as before so apparently I was in the minority.
10T KZOK(FM) 3.7 Album Rock
13 KING(AM) 3.4 Adult Contemporary (listed as PA, for "Pop/adult"). KING had finally and clearly lost in the Top 40 wars and flipped to a soft rock format with low key DJs. They were also serving as a test bed for the Kahn AM Stereo system around this time, because I remember they ran promos on the air telling listeners that we could listen in stereo by detuning two separate radios – one below their center frequency, and the other above. One thing that this station shares in common with KVI(AM) is that it lost about half its audience versus 1977, when it had a 6.7 share and ranked fifth (just below KJR, at a 6.8).
14 KMPS-FM 3.1 Country
15 KNBQ(FM) 2.7 Top 40 (listed as R, for "rock"). This is the first time that KNBQ beats KTAC in the Tacoma Top 40 battle. KNBQ had ditched the automation in 1979, but they’d also gone to a strange music mix where they played everything except disco. They abandoned that approach in favor of a balanced approach in early 1980, and it paid off in the ratings. Note that the 2.7 share is mostly from Pierce County, as KNBQ did not put a great signal into Seattle at this point; while they’d boosted power to 100 kw, they were running that power from only 370 feet HAAT.
16 KIXI(AM) 2.6 Beautiful Music
17T KIXI-FM 2.5 Adult Contemporary (listed as PA, for "Pop/adult")
17T KMPS(AM) 2.5 Country
19 KING-FM 2.1 Classical
20 KBIQ(FM) 2 Religion
21T KTAC(AM) 1.8 Top 40 (listed as R, for "rock"). The beginning of the end for KTAC – the audience that they’d lost to KNBQ since the last book never came back.
21T KYAC(AM) 1.8 Urban Contemporary (listed as B, for "Black"). The only commercial station aiming at a Black audience (but I remember that a number of Asian classmates did listen to this station, so they didn’t just get a Black audience); a 1.8 share is surprisingly decent considering how small the Black population was in the market and how crappy their signal was. They were shared time with KWSU in Pullman and operated from midnight to sunset.
23 KGDN(AM) 1.5 Religion
24 KAYO(AM) 1.3 News
25 KWYZ(AM) 1.2 Country
26 KXA(AM) 1 Classical (not sure that is accurate, as the station was bought and switched formats around this time)
Between the previous post (for the Spring of 1997) and this one, I hope that I've provided an interesting perspective on Puget Sound area radio in this time period. For me, it's also personal -- that last post was from just before I started high school and this post is just before I graduated. And like many teenagers back then, radio was a major factor in my life.
