KEXP

KEXP-FM (90.3 MHz) is a non-commercial radio station licensed to Seattle, Washington, United States, specializing in alternative and indie rock programmed by its disc jockeys for the Seattle metropolitan area. The station is owned by the non-profit Friends of KEXP. KEXP hosts weekly programs dedicated to other musical genres, such as rockabilly, blues, world music, hip hop, electronica, punk, and alternative country. Live, in-studio performances by artists are also regularly scheduled. KEXP's studios are located at Seattle Center, while the transmitter is in the city's Capitol Hill neighborhood. In addition to a standard analog transmission, KEXP is available online.

KEXP was started as KCMU, the student-run station of the University of Washington (UW), in 1972. It became recognized for its significant impact on the regional music scene, including being the first station to play Nirvana and Soundgarden in the late 1980s. In the 1990s, it went through several significant changes, including a multi-year standoff between management and some DJs over programming policies. After partnering with the Experience Music Project, now the Museum of Pop Culture, in 2001, the station began to grow into one with an international listener base thanks to an early investment in internet streaming and its website. UW transferred the license to Friends of KEXP in 2014; as part of the agreement, KEXP is still considered an affiliate of the university.

History

KCMU: The early years

The University of Washington (UW)'s involvement in radio broadcasting dates to the 1952 launch of KUOW-FM, which moved to 94.9 MHz in 1958. The station served as an environment for training communications students and provided classical music, fine arts, and sports programming. However, in the early 1970s, university budget cuts led to an increased professionalization of that station and decreased student involvement. As a result, four UW undergraduates—John Kean, Cliff Noonan, Victoria ("Tory") Fiedler, and Brent Wilcox—began formulating a plan to create a second UW station, one that would be run by students. Noonan felt that there was insufficient student media in a time marked by student activism and protests; there was a student newspaper, the ''University of Washington Daily'', and Noonan had come from San Francisco, where he was aware of other college stations. The four students formulated a proposal and were able to secure the backing of the UW Board of Regents, which promised funding if the students could get a station approved by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). On July 13, 1971, UW filed an application for a new 10-watt non-commercial educational station on 90.5 MHz, which would be located in the Communications Building (abbreviated CMU on campus maps).

On October 5, the FCC granted the permit. It then fell to the students to put together the equipment and resources necessary to get KCMU going. Old turntables from a northwest Washington radio station, an old transmitter being discarded by KNHC at Nathan Hale High School as it was upgrading its own facilities; the students also received a $2,500 grant from the Board of Regents. Construction tasks included retrofitting a third-floor room in the building, erecting a transmitter tower atop McMahon Hall, and manually upgrading a telephone line to send audio from the Communications Building to the facility. KCMU began broadcasting on May 10, 1972. The limited-power station served few listeners; a 2007 column recounting the station's early history noted that it "barely reached the Ave", the commercial heart of Seattle's University District. The station split its airtime between information and "folk-rock and blues" music. That year, it sent reporters to both national political conventions. The station also produced alternative student-led coverage of UW athletic events, including women's basketball, which was not being aired at the time by the commercial rightsholder for university sports, KIRO.

While there were so few listeners in 1975 that UW administrators ordered a programming overhaul, by 1981, the station was starting to become more adventurous musically. Every weekday from 3 p.m. to midnight, the station was airing new wave music. That July, the station converted to a full-time new wave format after KZAM (1540 AM), a commercial outlet attempting the same format, changed due to low ratings. A power boost also came. In 1980, the university had filed to increase KCMU's power from 10 watts to 182 in the wake of changes to FCC regulations encouraging many 10-watt stations to increase power. The $5,000 upgrade, carried out in June 1982, also marked the beginning of stereo broadcasts for the first time. They also came as further university budget cuts meant the end of budgetary support from the UW's School of Communications; a one-time grant from the university student activities and fees committee kept the station on the air during the 1981–1982 school year and gave its backers time to hold fundraising events. This marked a permanent shift to being listener-supported, though KUOW provided engineering and accounting services. As part of its operating agreement, the station aired five-minute hourly newscasts prepared by the university's journalism students.

Another technical change came in January 1987, when the station moved from 90.5 to 90.3 MHz and to a tower site in the Capitol Hill neighborhood, using 400 watts. The technical changes came at a time when KCMU had commercial competition in the form of KJET (1590 AM), which had adopted the format in 1982. When NPR debuted the Sunday '' Weekend Edition'' in January 1987, KCMU picked up the program it displaced on KUOW-FM, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's '' Sunday Morning''.

KCMU and the "Seattle sound"

KCMU found itself at the center of a budding new music scene in more ways than one beginning in the mid-1980s. In the words of early 1980s music director Faith Henschel, the station had long been "very sympathetic to local bands" and already had a requirement that a local band must be played at least once every hour. In late 1985, Chris Knab, who co-founded 415 Records and was a former owner of Aquarius Records in San Francisco, sold his interest in 415 Records and became KCMU's station manager. The next year, '' Rolling Stone'' featured KCMU and other college stations in an article hailing them as growing "taste makers". Jonathan Poneman—who hosted a music show known as "Audioasis"—and Bruce Pavitt met at KCMU, leading to the foundation of Sub Pop. In a 2011 retrospective on grunge in ''Billboard'', he noted that his "big break" was being a DJ at KCMU.

Through the UW at this time were passing a series of future influential figures with ties to bands. Mark Arm lived in Terry Hall for a time, going on to front Green River and Mudhoney. Kim Thayil had moved to Seattle to follow Pavitt; he won a prize on KCMU, was invited to be a full-time DJ, and not only graduated from the UW with a degree in philosophy but got his band Soundgarden exposure on KCMU, the first station to play them. Music director Henschel created a two-cassette compilation of songs by local groups, titled "Bands That Will Make You Money", and sent it to record labels; that led to Soundgarden getting signed to A&M Records. Soundgarden was not the only group that KCMU was breaking on the radio: in 1988, Kurt Cobain, looking for airplay for his band Nirvana, knocked on KCMU's door and handed the station a copy of his first single, " Love Buzz"; they did not play it until Cobain called from a gas station pay phone to request it. That same year, KCMU again became the only alternative music station in the Seattle market when KJET dropped the format.

While KCMU was becoming renowned in the grunge scene, its musical offerings were more varied. Under Henschel, the format was broadened to take in blues and African music, among other genres. The Sunday night ''Rap Attack'' was the first radio program in Seattle to play such artists as Ice-T, Eazy-E, and N.W.A. By the late 1990s, the program had changed names to ''Street Sounds'', with hosts including DJ Nasty-Nes and Marcus "Kutfather" Tufono; it remains on KEXP's schedule.

By 1992, ten years after becoming listener-supported, KCMU's budget had grown from $20,000 to $180,000. In addition to the two technical improvements in the 1980s, it had added more paid staffers and listeners.

Strife and change in the '90s

In November 1992, seeking to professionalize the station's sound, KCMU management made the decision to dismiss nine volunteer disc jockeys to add two syndicated radio programs to the lineup: '' World Cafe'' from WXPN in Philadelphia and ''Monitoradio'', produced by ''