“Celebrating 50 years on the radio dial in beautiful Seattle,” says one sweeper.
“Seattle’s premiere source for globally hot dance music,” says another.
“Proud to be listener-supported in the greatest city in the world,” declares the legal ID.
KNHC (C89.5) Seattle, operated by the Seattle Public Schools, and named for its Nathan Hale High School, celebrates that milestone on Jan. 25. This Saturday (23), PD J.B. McDaniel will co-host a 2 p.m. PT online Open House, open to the public. Larry Adams, the electronics teacher who helped found the station, will be one of the guests.
In the ‘70s, KNHC was Top 40 by day, AOR at night, and Country on Saturday morning. In the early ‘80s, it was R&B, then Dance, adapting the format at the time between the late ‘70s disco boom and its mid-‘80s Power 106 L.A.-driven resurgence. C89.5 has remained a dance station through at least three boom/bust cycles for the format.
In the early 2000s, as the pop/dance wave of the previous five years began to fade, C89.5 became the first non-comm reporter to the dance-radio charts. Currently, it’s one of only two full-time local broadcast stations on the chart. (The remainder are South Florida’s Revolution 93.5, three satellite stations, Music Choice’s dance channel, iHeart and Entercom’s national services, and one HD-2 station.)
When I reviewed Revolution 93.5 four years ago, the superstar DJ/producers who had dominated CHR’s late ‘00s/early ‘10s resurgence were slowing down their hits to a dull throb. The result was that dance radio, once the format’s fringy sounding “other,” was suddenly more uptempo and accessible than CHR. Four years later, the difference in energy level between the two formats is more noticeable than ever.
Dance differs from Top 40 in another significant way, McDaniel says. “I was getting music pitched to me nonstop through the holiday break.” In CHR, major acts reportedly held back product after the pandemic. But without touring to keep dance’s DJ/producers busy “everyone who could [was making] music in 2020.” Often, those acts were collaborating with each other, making artist separation difficult.
C89.5 promises “57 minutes of dance music every hour.” When it does stop, it’s for sponsorships (including a flotation therapy salon) and school board announcements, but mostly to promote the station’s nightly specialty shows. On Tuesday, there were promos for a K-Pop show and a retro mix. Another station specialty show, Café Chill, is nationally syndicated.
Here’s KNHC just before 4 p.m. on January 19, leading into the station’s “Drive at 5” mix.
- Camelphat f/Lowes, “Easier”
- Rihanna f/David Guetta, “Right Now”
- Meduza f/Dermot Kennedy, “Paradise”
- Sam Feldt f/Ella Henderson, “Hold Me Close”
- Icona Pop x Sofi Tucker, “Spa”
- Taska Black & Emily Vaughn, “Easier”
- Avicii, “Wake Me Up”
- Nicky Romero, “Lighthouse”
- Jax Jones & Au/Ra, “I Miss U”
- Alesso f/Sirena, “Sweet Escape”
- Travis Scott & Hvme, “Goosebumps (Remix)”
- Ava Max, “Kings and Queens”
- Robin Schulz, “All We Got”
- Marshmello f/Wrabel, “Ritual”
- Tyron Hapi, Sud & Sam Bruno, “Lonely Heart”
- BTS f/Sia, “On”
- Robbie Mendez, “Imagine”
There’s one more sweeper, heard late in the hour, worth mentioning. When I first heard it, I thought it was directed toward the audience, but C89.5 is operating without students during COVID. The school is still teaching radio classes remotely, but “it’s a high-school station with no high-schooler voices,” says McDaniel. The liner is “we’ve learned something about ourselves. We miss you too. Stay safe. There’s more fun to come from C89.5.”
You can support C89.5 here.
I still wonder, every so often, about whether full-fledged Dance could’ve ended up becoming a commercially viable primary format in much of the U.S.–as it does still have some significant examples in other countries.
New Zealand still has the effectively national George FM. Mexico City still has Beat 100.9 (XHSON)–which is a bit ironic in that co-owned Oye 89.7 (XEOYE) itself might lean more Dance than the market’s other CHRs. And, while Spain’s Máxima FM eventually got downgraded, and then replaced by a Dance-based (and perhaps online-only) offshoot of Los40, it might’ve been due to too much competition–including from Catalonia’s regional Flaix FM and even what might be a national Gold-based outlet (Loca FM).