My vote would go to KUPL. Station has a consistent "sound" to it, most of the air talent relates well with the music, and the format flows. The station does lots of promotions so that many listeners can participate in winning. The station sounds like it is involved with the community.Actually, if you dropped in rock music or oldies this station would still sound great! I found country listeners to be the most loyal of any format I ever worked. It shows in the ratings of the 2 country stations here in Portland.

"if you dropped in rock music or oldies this station would still sound great!"

I don't think so. KUPL switched to country decades ago and has a loyal audience that wouldn't put up with anything else, IMHO. Way back KUPL was automated easy listening trash and their AM (1330) was country and did very well. Ironically, the AM/FM combo was once called KPOJ, call letters that came back around in the recent decade.

So the main reason that KUPL is successful is that they have not changed formats in many years, rather than any specific aspect of how they execute the format?

Well, prior to April of last year I'd have said it was Golden Hours. It always had a rather "conversational" tone, something that (I think) seems to be lacking in most of the "regular" Portland radio stations since Otto took them over. ;o)

Maybe GH still is still doing "good radio"? I really don't know. Haven't listened to it since it went off the air almost a year ago. Trying to stream 80kbps MPEG audio over a 56K modem which (on a good day) runs at about 33.2K does work to some extent, but not very well......

I appreciate the fact that KUPL actually has a LOCAL 7-mid jock on the air. I'm pretty sure it's the only country station in Oregon that does.

In Portland, Z100 and KINK are live and local at night, too...but I think that's all. 3 (music) stations.

Makes me sad.

When Big89 mentioned dropping in rock music or oldies, I think he meant instead of country, not in addition to, referring to the general sound of the station between the music.

I got to hear a week of KUPL in AM drive and midday recently, thought they were very conversational and one-on-one. The personalities were intelligent and talented and the station was pretty free of junk promotions that plague most stations these days. Not bad!

I like Mike and Amy on the wolf A LOT better!

That's nice of you all to say. We appreciate it. =)

Must be all the hard work of their awesome program director paying off!

All I know is that listening to the music on KUPL and then the same on KWJJ, the sound quality, to me, is better on KWJJ than KUPL. It is just a crisper cleaner sound on the same radio. When the HD kicks in on KWJJ, it improves even better. Therefore, just for the music, I'll stick with KWJJ in HD over KUPL.
Same for KOOL-HD over KHITS. It just sounds better.
To me.
I like clean crisp highs and good deep tight solid bass.

I'm sure they'll all be HD shortly after the FCC decides on the HD power increase. If it weren't for that, I'd say as soon as they move to the new master antenna.

Noise says: >>>In Portland, Z100 and KINK are live and local at night, too...but I think that's all. 3 (music) stations<<<

Err Kink isn't.

Iris at KGON has been doing great Radio for years.