Jody Rosen at the formerly-locally-owned Slate has a lovely rant about the unbearable whiteness of “indie” music. Then Rosen segues into a side rant about the peculiar slant of NPR (and upscale white America) toward black music; preferably their preferences for Af-Am artists who are “Dead, Old, Retro, Foreign,” or “DORF.”

Feliks Banel offers fond recollections of the late great KJET, the AM modern-rock station that ruled a small but eventually-influential portion of Seattle’s listening audience from 1982 to 1988.

…its five-part Post-Intelligencer remembrance series. No new information here, just memories—and one really retro image of Jean Godden.

The legendary radio commentator began his national career in 1951 with what, at the time, was a standard program format—15 minutes of news headlines mixed with personal opinions. Harvey outlasted all of that format’s other, now forgotten practitioners (Lowell Thomas, Fulton Lewis Jr., Gabriel Heatter, etc.). Like many of these forebearers, Harvey maintained an attitude of just-plain-folks populism while he advocated conservative policies that pleased big corporate advertisers. And like a lot of radio conservatives past and present, his “hot” personality translated poorly into the “cooler” aesthetic of television.

Bonneville International, which just regained ownership of KIRO Radio last year, will switch KIRO-AM to all sports talk next April. KIRO-AM’s news and news-talk fare will move exclusively to 97.3 FM.

Thus will end more than 35 years of what was successively billed as “KIRO Newsradio 7,” then “KIRO Newsradio 71,” then “710 KIRO.” (Each more precise frequency reference responded to the prevalence of more precise tuning displays on car radios.)

KIRO-AM is one of the city’s oldest stations. It goes back to the Old Time Radio golden age, during which it amassed a larger collection of CBS Radio network recordings than CBS itself had (a collection of phonograph records that’s now owned by the UW). It eased into a middle-of-the-road music and news format by the early 1960s.

In the early 1970s, Bonneville spent its way to the top of the local ratings by ditching the DJs (except on weekends) and hiring a full news reporting staff.

I heard Nixon’s resignation speech on KIRO. I heard the start of the first Gulf War on KIRO. The voices of Bill Yeend, Dave Ross, Jim French, the late Wayne Cody, et al. are permanently etched in my brain’s ROM.

It was weird, on Election Night, to bring a cheap, FM-only portable radio to my temp office site and try to listen (during a dinner break) to NPR’s blathering “analysis” of returns that hadn’t come in yet. KIRO had already begun simulcasting its news-talk on FM, but I couldn’t pull in that signal from where I was.

But that’s one reason why they’re doing this. The public now associates AM talk with looney right-wing demagogues. FM is now where the targeted demographic audience segments go for everything except sports (with a few notable exceptions such as KIXI and KPTK).

Like many “sixties youth icons,” Carlin was already 30 by the summer-O-love. Aside from being an anti-censorship icon (who nonetheless got his share of “family entertainment” roles, he was one of the last bridges between the Ed Sullivan and Saturday Night Live eras. He also virtually invented the pay-TV comedy special genre, that most direct of storytelling formats.

…a few days since we last met. But here are some recent events in the nooze:

• A plan’s been announced to keep the Sonics, or move in some other NBA team to replace ‘em. Yeah, it involves public arena subsidies. But the arena in question would still be our good ol’ KeyArena/Coliseum. And private interests would pick up a huger share of the tab than in any previous scheme. Of course, there’s the li’l matter of convincing current owner Clay Bennett and NBA commissioner David Stern (who hates Seattle even more than the Seattle Times editorial board does).
• No matter how much money the UW raises in its many assorted fundraising/begging programs, it just keeps on making tuition ever-less affordable. Congress doesn’t like it.
• Some self-styled radical environmentalists want to preserve exurban forest lands from sprawl. Their solution: Set fire to an unoccupied cul-de-sac, a fire which, if set at some other time of the year, could conceivably spread and burn said forest land.
• The first televised Mariners game of the pre-season is on local cable at noon today (Monday). I know it’s a game that doesn’t “count,” but hey, neither did the Ms’ last 20 or so games last season.
• Once you start looking into Port o’ Seattle corruption, it can truly become a bottomless pit.
• How to get high school kids interestedin reading newspapers: Run sensational surveys of students’ oral-sex experiences. (Hey, it’s the taste sensation that’s sweeping the nation!)
• Airbus, with a domestic company fronting for it, got the Air Force tanker plane contract Boeing really really wanted. Next stop: litigation.
• Here’s what to do the next time you see a bus with an unconscious driver heading your way.
• Since certain right-wing radio guys have no qualms about using or misusing people’s names in order to make character-assassination implications, let’s compare Vladmir Putin’s handpicked successor/flunky Dimitry Medvedev with the locally based GOP-talk spewer Michael Medved: One is a sniveling, butt-kissing toady to a ruthless, anti-democratic despot with delusions of godhood. And one is the new President of Russia.

…could possibly resist the clarion call of Obamamania? Douglas County, that’s who.

In other nooze:

• As you probably don’t recall, the reason WashState has both caucuses and primaries is because Bush pere’s people cried foul after Pat Robertson’s people swamped our ‘88 GOP caucuses. This time, it’s Huckabee’s people crying foul.
• Your Museum of Flight: Singlehandedly bringing back the stewardess fetish.
• Note to KEXP main man John Richards: You can host a local Seattle show, or you can move to NYC. Choose one.
• Developers’ plans for the part of First United Methodist that won’t be saved: One of them angular, reflective glass towers you see in 60 Minutes segments about emerging Far Eastern capitals.
• Doesn’t anybody wanna buy Getty Images?
• Actual headline (for the print version of this story): “How far will Microsoft go to overcome Yahoo’s rejection?” Some handy tips: Chocolate, self-esteem classes, regular gym workouts, a ‘pity party’ with friends, a nice cry, then get on with your own life.

The only real liberal on local commercial talk radio, David Goldstein, has been axed from his weekend-night shift on KIRO-AM. The station, which recently came under new/old management, has decided to fill more of its lower-rated hours with repeats and syndicated fare.

…as you may know. But I like sometime NPR contributor John Hockenberry’s account of how he never quite fit in at Dateline NBC. He alleges the show’s producers (1) wanted only stories with an “emotional center,” but only if those emotions were the ones the producers wanted to exploit, (2) didn’t get that the Internet age was irreversably fragmenting the former mass audience, and (3) were too caught up in corporate-culture nonsense that actively discouraged creative thinking.