OLDIES RADIO

There are some recent additions to the radio dial here in Kodiak, and one of those stations has been playing at the place where The Kodiak Perspective works. This is the oldies station, playing songs of the 60s, 70s, and 80s. With three decades worth of music to choose from, one might think that the play list could be full of forgotten gems, classics, and songs that you might have missed, certainly quite a variety of music. Unfortunately, there is very little variety on the station, with songs being repeated daily, and several bands getting a good portion of the spins.

The Kodiak perspective used to look forward to holiday weekends when radio stations would roll out “Top 500" countdowns, just to hear different songs. The top 500 is a purely subjective list and often made no sense. But it was a weekend of no repeats.

If they would just load the hits and semi-hits, and cult favorites onto a hard drive and put it on shuffle, we might not have to endure the same tired songs everyday. We could easily go a month without repeats.

There are many bands that get no play on the music of the 60s, 70s, and 80s. The Kodiak Perspective hasn’t heard any Dionne Warwick singing Bert Bacharach, or Herp Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, or Led Zepplin, or Donna Summer, or Humble Pie, Frank Zappa, Yes, Rush, Jimi Hendrix . . . the list could go on for days.

Why do they insist on playing the same stuff over and over? Oldies radio is all about the advertisers. Here in Kodiak this lousy programming will get sponsors because there are few alternatives, so it doesn’t matter what kind lousy play list the station chooses. Kodiak, we deserve better.

Maybe when Kodiak Public Broadcasting gets some more signals approved, they can load up a terabyte hard drive with a play list of several thousand tunes and offer something interesting, surprising, and worth listening to.