A KUOW cry for help

KUOW's Weekday with Steve Scher (m-f, 9-11a) is asking for your help with Tuesday's 9a show.

Oregon waste treatment plants and green veterinary clinics be damned! Steve & co. are taking their annual hour to review the politics of the past year- and you can help.

They're asking: "What's the big political story? Is there a trend you've spotted? Are you heartened or troubled by the country's direction at year's end? Write in with your thoughts to weekday@kuow.org"

The hour will feature Mr. & Ms. Excitement: The P-I's Joel Connelly and The Seattle Times' Joanie Balter, whose generation's futzing and forthholding has been a near lock on KUOW political anals since the 2nd Coming of Ronald Reagan.

(The vibrant, local netroots, voices under 50, conservatives, and those outside establishment Seattle media are nearly invisible on political KUOW. We'd love to hear the voices of such as David Goldstein, Eric Earling,Sandeep Kaushik, Ron Reagan, Josh Feit,  Erica Barnett, Andrew Villeneuve, Aimee Curl, Dan Kirkdorffer, Jonah Spangenthal-Lee, Nina Shapiro, Dean Nielsen, Joan "McJoan" McCarter, Will Kelley-Kamp, Geov Parrish, and Dan Savage. And, we suspect, so would the demo public radio is always wringing their hands over not attracting!). 

Comments

[sparky]

Hmmm I think this will be a pretty predictable show, regardless of who provides the ideas...I bet I can predict the lineup right now: local Seattle politics, King County politics, Dino Rossi, more local Seattle politics, Huckabee vs. Romney, Hillary vs, Obama, some more local Seattle politics.

ew,

[Andrew]

The purpose is... ?

[sarge]

Its Major Hoople and I love lucy.

[Martin Buber]

Right on, Michael. Local NPR in Seattle is just boring and pedantic. Behind the scenes they're all young over at KUOW, but to listen you would never know it. Where have all the interesting and funny people like Bill Radke, Luke Burbank, gone? We all know--somewhere else where they're appreciated and paid. Does the last Boomer have to die before this station wakes up?

[sparky]

KPLU has much more interesting programming...but even they pale in comparison to the one in St. Paul.

I realize that as a non-resident of Seattle, I am more critical of the offerings on radio there. But be honest..don't the rest of you tire of hearing the same old arguments for/against transit, for/against the viaduct, etc.? Where are the discussions on the arts, on outdoor recreation? when I lived up north, I could get the AM CBC station out of Vancouver. Every day they had something different that was fascinating to listen to--some of it even real wacky. Some of it was stupid. But I will never forget the First nation's woman who discussed that in early times, Coastal Indian women would boil beaver testicles and drink the "tea" as a form of birth control. I about drove off the freeway on that one.

[Simon]

What they didn't realize is that only gave them protection from getting pregnant by beavers, didn't work for huskies, cougars or ducks.

[sparky]

..or bears.

[sarge]

o my...

[Olympic Peninsula Resident]

I tried, God knows I tried. I listened for years as KUOW cut out more and more interesting coverage to make room for the coma-inducing lineup of talking head shows that makes up their daily fare.

I gave up in 2004 when KUOW's news director took a pass on covering a Methodist Church trial of a lesbian minister in Bothell. It attracted media from all over the world, print, TV and radio. But not KUOW.

Every day they run Morning Edition what, nine times back to back? Then they start with Steve Sher starting his question one way, then wandering through five or six run-on variants before he gets to an end; his panels of locals trying to find a local hook for national news when they could be filling the gap the two daily papers have pretty much created by abandoning local news; then another hourly with different talking heads; then another, and another....

KUOW's evil twin on the Internet, KXOT, shows someone there has an ear for more varied and interesting programming, but as others have said better, why do the interesting programs always seem to get killed or leave? Why not bring back real local stuff like A new Sandy Bradley's Potlouck, or a radio Almost Live like Radke's show was? Seattle has one of the biggest gay populations in America but you won't know it from anything KUOW offers.

Thank God we can get CBC up here, and BBC on the web.

[Olympic Peninsula Resident]

Oh, one other thing....I wouldn't rush to line up Stranger talking heads. Erica C. Barnett just posted on SLOG that Port Townsend deserves to lose car ferry service because it's just another rich Seattle suburb.

[1stthymecaller]

Well, they can't spend those surpluses...

[Burk]

Too bad the oldsters who run KUOW don't read blogs. I too have lived in Minneapolis and Chicago and felt that Public radio in those cities were vibrant and going someplace. XM radio is my hope for the future. It's the new frontier. (I hope).