Pat Alder, 1240 KGY Olympia | June 1, 2000

1240 Olympia KGY

New Contributor Pat Alder donated this 2-hour tape which sounds like it came right out of the studio recorder. The quality is so good, I decided to leave the tape intact. And, for another reason. Its an Adult Contemporary/Full-Service AM station that sounds modern, live and relevant.

This brings up a point that someone brought up recently. Radio seems to have come to a point where smaller market stations, especially those left on AM, have to either do a better job of their formats than their big-city FM counterparts, or they have to all but eliminate any staff whatsoever, automate everything and run the station from a remote location as part of a large cluster. There’s really no room for anything in the middle. This station would definitely fit into the former category.

I’m totally impressed with both the on-air presentation of Pat Alder, along with the mix of local and AP-Network news, local sports coverage, and the fact that even in 2000, the station DARED to be a modern Pop music station! Looking them up online now, and according to our contributor, KGY has changed and apparently is no longer live and local – but given the extremely sad state of AM radio these days, who could really expect a local music entity to survive on AM?

Well… Pat Alder said this before mailing this tape:

“Many thanks for allowing me to be a part of THE best collection on radio. I played it (the aircheck) last a month ago, so its in good shape. It is 60 mins unscoped, on both sides of a cassette.

Thanks, Pat… and we look forward to your next contribution to the archives. And thanks for the kind words!