National Public Rock-N-Roll?

I did a double take when I turned on my radio this morning. Instead of hearing the normal top of the hour NPR news report I heard the soft sound of crystals blowing in the wind and a dulcet voice announcing that I was listening to "99.5 -- The Mountain." Turns out it was an early morning NPR advert for an All Things Considered story later in the day on the topic of "neo-radio" stations. The funny thing is that when my radio is not tuned to 1490 AM -- my local NPR station -- it's tuned to 99.5 The Mountain. Besides being a local station for me, KQMT has one other huge benefit in that it seems to be the only other non-Clear Channel station in the state of Colorado.

Apparently, a few radio stations have wised up to the fact that most radio is crap. Inane morning shows, crass DJ's, too many commercials, limited play lists of horrible music -- these are not the ingredients upon which to grow an audience. Listening to the NPR story I learned that 99.5 The Mountain is one of but a few radio stations around the country taking a decidedly different approach. One obvious focus of this "neo" approach is, certainly, the music -- no talking over songs and large playlists of obscure songs. (I seem to recall a staple of my college experience, 106.1 WRDU, hewing to a similar philosophy.

But another tenant of the neo-radio approach is being decidedly anti-hype. WRDU, as I also recall, did engage in a fair amount of hype even 15 years ago. KQMT, on the other hand, steers away from anything that smacks of hype and showmanship. Interestingly, according to the story, the model for such anti-hype is none other than National Public Radio. NPR's tremendous audience growth over the past few years has not gone unnoticed.

A few months ago I wrote about the death of local radio. Perhaps anti-hype will spur more stations to copy the KQMT model and maybe (good) local radio will be around for a little longer.