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At any given moment, it's most likely going to be KEXP in Seattle, but it wasn't always this way.
For the first 40-or-so years of my life, if the radio was on, it was tuned to CBC Radio. It was usually on - at least in the mornings - growing up. The Morningside tune still rattles around in my mind sometimes, and it was CBC that I'd fall asleep to every night.
Right up until early 2023 or so.
While the public broadcaster's offerings were always a little hit-or-miss, it became clearer and clearer to me that management either supports a vision for Canada that is not one I recognize, or program in fear those with this vision.
Either way, day-in and day-out, our house would be filled with unstructured and unchallenged air time for politicians of one stripe, but rarely others. They'd invite guests well-known for JAQing off on air, and just generally presenting things in a shade falling out-of-step with my values.
And my identity.
Knowing that there are no other newsy-takly radio stations that don't have that problem, the search for a new station would be music.
I always enjoyed listening to Indie88 (Toronto), but we quickly found that their playlist tends to be limited. We also tried WFMU (New Jersey) and WFUV (New York), but didn't find talking over the music (the former) or a repetitive daily trifecta of Prince, Talking Heads, and Elvis Costello (the latter) especially charming.
We then found MPR's The Current (Minneapolis-St. Paul), which was a delight, and while significantly better than the others we had tried, began to find that the programming sometimes veered into repetitive territory.
