This goes into detail about some of the stuff that Jay Bozich posted here a while back in the 'favorite stations' thread:
http://www.theskanner.com/index.php?action=artd&artid=6985

I can see why former K-Boo listeners are elsewhere. Music options today make it so easy. This is why KBOO is struggling with its block music hours. K-Boo must choose a format to hit most of their listeners to survive. This won't go down without a fight. Remembering OPB when they dropped most of their Classical music for News.

There also seems to be other problems listeners won't tolerate:

"The station’s second consideration is about air quality. While some hosts have earned international recognition for their programming, others air programs that have remained unchanged for 15 or 20 years; other deejays don’t cue up the music right. Davis said one of KBOO’s most frequent complaints is that there’s too much dead air."

We don’t have appointment and destination programs anymore,” Davis said

Bummer

IMHO, this is one area where radio could improve. Just tuning in and liking it, given all the choices available now might be the wrong expectation to set for all times.

Better to know when one would really freaking like it!

That aside, I'm eager to see how it all shakes out.

KBOO should have been much more proactive years ago in anticipating the loss of huge chunks of their audience to Jammin', KPOJ, El Rey, and the expansion of blues/eclectic pop on KMHD. These stations captured thousands of listeners who previously had no choice but to learn and follow KBOO's schedule. No amount of tinkering is going to bring that audience back. It's gone. (The commercial stations may not do as good a job of these formats as KBOO, but they do them acceptably well for most listeners and they do them 24/7.) Probably the only real hope for KBOO's continued viability is a consistent Americana/folkie/alt-country format like that described in the Skanner article (with substantial community affairs and foreign-language programming in fringe hours). This would build on the station's largest remaining core audience. I'm not sure they're quite ready to make such a big change right now, though. Maybe in another year or two.

"too much dead air".
That's funny. I thought that was a requirement to be on the air with public radio.
I was on KSOR in Ashland 100 years ago and also on a CHR station at the same time, would come into the public radio station just after an amped up CHR shift and they had to give me qualuudes to get me to slow down and I always had to let the song completely end, then pause for 2 seconds and thennnnnnnn slowly turn on the mic and slowwwwlllly say who it was I just played. AHRRHHHHHHHHHH
That was painful.

Doesn't anyone else remember how KBOO gained a mainstream audience and their subscriber base swelled when they carried the city council meetings live in the early '70s? (The heady days of city reform, the Mt. Hood Freeway, etc.) Getting a phone line from Third and Salmon up the street to city hall was the best investment they made; they were soon able to upgrade from 10 to 3500 watts.

Perhaps the council meetings are on cable now. I don't live in the city so I wouldn't know.

(I also miss seeing talking heads of local significance on KOAP-TV. I wonder if they might consider putting some their third subchannel, instead of cooking and craft shows.)

It is interesting to see that even KBOO now has a "consultant" trying to help them out. Nonetheless, the article does point out one of the challenges that volunteer-run stations face with trying to change: the people who volunteer at the station have the expectation that they can do what they want to do for as long as they wish to do so.

In a sense, this identity crisis reminds me a lot of what we went through at WITR in the latter half of the 1990s, when the Rochester market started to feel the combined effects of the 1996 Telecommunications act and of 1990s musicradio program philosophies. That station had a daytime format that encouraged being all things to all people, as long as half of the cuts being played were newly released material. In 1994, a fair number of people seemed to tolerate this format. In early 1995, one of the commercial stations flipped to a modern rock format, taking many listeners. Within less than a year, a non-comm station shifted to a full-time modern rock format, with a slightly different playlist than the commercial station. That left us with even fewer listeners. Sometime in late 1996 or early 1997, a new Class-A station signed on and debuted a Modern AC format. By that time, we had so few listeners left that it was difficult to get any response when we gave stuff away on the air, and hardly anybody called the studio line to make requests.

Perhaps the council meetings are on cable now.
Yes, they're on a channel called CityNet 30, however one has to remember that only cable subscribers in Portland have the channel (if you have Dish or DirecTV you're outta luck, and some who use an antenna for TV might not even know that Portland has a city council). And it does no good for people who are at work who might want to hear what's going on live who might not want to watch a rebroadcast.

KBOO should have been much more proactive years ago in anticipating the loss of huge chunks of their audience to Jammin', KPOJ, El Rey, and the expansion of blues/eclectic pop on KMHD.
With all the publicity KZME is getting (and they're not even on the air yet), it will probably attract even more of KBOOs current/former audience.

Probably the only real hope for KBOO's continued viability is a consistent Americana/folkie/alt-country format...
And the article said they're not willing to do that because it wouldn't fulfill their mission statement!

Many moderately successful non-coms have hybrid formats, a specific format on weekdays and block programs nights and weekends. Block programming ideally should lean towards programs of interest to a sizable chunk of the weekday format audience. However, there should still be some blocks targeting specific groups that just aren't served anywhere else on the dial.

Eugene's KRVM, as an example is Triple A weekdays, Blues early mornings and some overnights, and blocks that are mostly rock sub-genres, folk/acoustic, oldies, Spanish rock, etc. Yes, there are a few shows like the Native American music show, and Country Classics that don't fit the mold, but those shows do attract listeners and donors, otherwise they'd be replaced with something else.

While KRVM may not be hugely successful fund raising in a market the size of Eugene-Springfield, it's notable they have approximately the same number of actual listeners Average Quarter Hour as KBOO. KRVM's average Time Spent Listening is double KBOO's. KRVM's Cume is right around 50 percent of KBOO's, but Eugene is a much smaller market than Portland.

I can't see how KZME can be much of a factor. The signal just isn't there. Perhaps, they can wrestle a translator away from someone. That would help a little.

What I'm sensing is KZME is generating some talk on the street, and they're not even on the air yet. No, I'm not associated with them!
I remember KNRK back in the days of being a C3, with people trying to do whatever they could to hear the station. To them, the programming was worth jumping through hoops to hear.

It looks like the 40dbu contour will just about cut across the center of Portland. It should be listenable on the east side of Gresham and that's about it. The 60dbu contour doesn't make it to Sandy. That's a far cry from KNRK as a C3 on Mt. Scott. They had plenty of signal and were easy to pick up on the west side. It's just a lot better now.

There are some interesting diffracion or "lensing" effects, for the lack of a better term, that cause KZRI from Welches to deliver a fairly respectable signal to my home near downtown Hillsboro. I will be eager to see if the same occurs with KZME.

I may have to back off on this somewhat. I just noticed that unlike KZRI, KZME will have a horizontal signal to equal its vertical. It's also nearly twice the power albeit still a Class C3.

KBOO has become was they depise....only they have yet to see it.

Jeffreykopp put hands to keyboard and stated--
"I also miss seeing talking heads of local significance on KOAP-TV. I wonder if they might consider putting some their third subchannel, instead of cooking and craft shows."

OPB used to have coverage of Oregon state legislative sesisions on Oregon Channel (OPB's nn.04 ATSC subchannel, often taped earlier in the day but sometimes live) but they seem to have stopped doing that about a year ago, more or less. Now they just seem to be re-running the same stuff KOPB, PBS HD and PBS Create already run..........

(By "talking heads of local significance", did you mean on the state level or on the Portland level??)

They had both Portland and state, and both officials and community activists. And it was informative (interviews or call-ins), not just video of proceedings or sessions.