February 1, 1990 (Kit Boss/Seattle Times) “Me and Him” are outta here. The pronoun-heavy KZOK-FM morning team punched out a week ago Monday, less than a year after they came to Seattle from Phoenix. “Their shtick didn’t fit our format,” said Larry Sharp, program director at classic rocker KZOK (102.5 mHz). “They did an 18- to 24-year-old show. We’re a 25- to 49-year-old station. It was a mismatch.” Sharp hopes to replace the pair by midmonth. Until then, weekend disc jockey James Young will fill in. The old morning team, Kent Voss and Jimmy Kimmel, pulled several stunts during their short stay in Seattle. You may remember the song they recorded to the tune of “Quinn the Mighty Eskimo” lampooning the then-owner of the Mariners, George Argyros. It also prompted the baseball club to cancel about $8,000 worth of advertising from the station, according to Sharp. “They did have some loyal fans,” Sharp conceded.“Unfortunately, not enough of them.”
You might have noticed something unusual at 96.1 on your FM tuner: a radio station. A Vancouver, B.C., station used to occupy the frequency, with a signal that often spilled into Seattle. But it went off the air several months ago. Now comes KXXO-FM in Olympia. The station signed on Jan. 16, playing a mixture of familiar “soft rock” songs: Billy Joel, Sade, Marvin Gaye and the like. The new station’s principal owners are David Rauh and Toni Holm, who cut their teeth at KAOS-FM, the noncommercial public station affiliated with The Evergreen State Collge. Without interference from Canada, and with an 80,000-watt transmitter on a 4,000-foot hill in southern Lewis County, KXXO has been flexing its muscles into Seattle. “It was never our intention,” says Rauh. “We’re an Olympia station.”
My time flies. That was 31 years ago.
96.1 FM was previously occupied by CKO-FM-4 from Vancouver, CN. which went dark in November 1989 along with the rest of the CKO Radio Network. It’s demise came during the 9AM PT newscast on 11/10/89.