KPOI is dead... long live KPOI

Bill O'Reilly felled "The Rock."

Well, not exactly.

According to this morning's Advertiser, Salem Media of Hawaii bought two FM frequencies (97.5, formerly KPOI – The Rock You Live On, and 99.5, formerly Bob-FM) from Visionary Related Entertainment of Maui. The most drastic change Visionary will make is to turn KPOI into KHNR, an all-talk/news FM station, a first for Hawaii. And controversial talk show host O'Reilly is on KHNR.

KPOI has been a fixture in the islands, ever since the infamous "Poi Boys" from the late 50's to the "98 Rock" days and so forth. This all could be temporary: the Advertiser says Visionary still owns the KPOI call letters, so someday soon, the rock shall rise from its ashes.

But I have to admit I didn't like the "modern rock" direction KPOI has been taking in the last few years. You can only take so much Creed-lite crap and whiny emo shit for so long before wanting to smash the radio buttons and bring on the oldies.

This morning, I listened a little to KHNR. Like I said, Hawaii has never had an FM talk radio-formatted station, and admittedly, it was odd hearing all those mainland talk radio commercials on the FM dial. I used to work at KGU AM760 about eight years ago, and I heard a lot of the same advertisers on KHNR that I remembered from the KGU days.

One thing I'd like to comment regarding the KHNR morning show: is it me or is the ratio of commercials to actual news something like 2-1?

Update: Okay, so KPOI is back, this time at 105.9 FM, formerly The Big Kahuna. Now it's "KPOI – The Big Kahuna" on 105.9 FM. But the new KPOI will not have a modern rock format, it'll be a classic rock one. At least that's what the Advertiser says here. Confused yet?