KXXO was always the station that would be on in the car on family trips to the southwest part of Washington, which were fairly often as my mom grew up in that area. Even though the station had a huge signal that could have easily been a Seattle rimshot from day one, the focus was always on Olympia and the South Sound. Outside of the country station targeting Lewis County, there really wasn’t much on the radio that could be heard all the way between Seattle and Portland. So, when it was announced that Bustos was buying the station a couple months back, it was a major development. The station had only had one owner and the same format and level of community involvement since signing on in January 1990. In fact, there are several stations that I think of as that community’s version of the station, some of which do a better job of emulating the sound than others.
Even on its last day on the air, the station was still live, despite that being a Sunday afternoon when many stations would likely be tracked. Outside of the goodbye announcements, operations were relatively normal, with the usual three short breaks per hour and limited imaging. If I were telling someone how I wanted a station to be programmed, KXXO would do everything wrong, but somehow it works. One thing present here that hadn’t been in recent years is the old Soft Rock for the Great Northwest jingle that was used to come out of certain breaks here. That was their positioning statement until it was dropped around 2011-12, around the time that many AC stations across the country were shedding their soft identity, and the time that KXXO’s imaging became much more limited. Next week, I’ll review various stations that have shut down over the years, where I will include the final hour of all of those, but for now here’s the relatively normal 4:00 P.M. hour on October 27, 2025.
- Goo Goo Dolls – Give A Little Bit
- Taylor Swift – Cruel Summer
- *Nsync – Bye Bye Bye
- A Flock of Seagulls – I Ran
- Lewis Capaldi – Survive
- One Republic – I Lived
- Don Henley – The Last Worthless Evening
- Elton John and Dua Lipa – Cold Heart
- No Doubt – Don’t Speak
- Hunter Haze – Wanted
- Somber – Undressed
- Madonna – La Isla Bonita
- Phil Collins and Phillip Bailey – Easy Lover
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