I was definitely a fan of the Bridge. I really wish they'd stop messing with this.

The radio industry always panics when times are tough. I just heard a bunch of stations I used to work at back in the UK are changing formats and talented people are going to lose their jobs.

That's the thing about radio. If you make cars and revenue is down you build better cars, tighten you belt and hope for the best. In radio you take a wild guess at what you think people will listen to and go for it. So do your competitors and the end result is a bunch of stations that sound remarkably the same, all fighting for the same demographic and same advertising dollars.

It takes a brave station manager to stand apart, pick a format they believe in, and go for it. Often the bosses lose faith and find a SM who isn't so 'inflexible'.

Look at the success of the Current. Nobody has the stones to try and emulate that in the commercial market.

I wish that KUMD would become more of a station that has students with their own shows playing what they want to play. I'd love to have an alternative rock shift, reggae, psychedlic, jam band, etc. Right now I usually only tune in for the World Cafe. I cannot believe that there are that many people that are digging the blues all of the time.

The Bridge was the only decent station left. Sad.

We have satellite radio, Sirius. I like the music stations but I find that I listen to BBC World Service more than I do anything else. That's worth the price of admission right there.

I'm on Barrett's boat. The only good program on the radio is World Cafe and that only runs a couple of hours a day. MP3 is most definitely where its at. Just set it to shuffle and you have your own personal radio station of all the music you love.

I agree wholeheartedly about KUMD and how more student shows aside from after 9 pm would benefit it.  KUMD is pretty brutal most of the time.  The soft acoustic stuff they play in the morning has about the same lyrical creativity and heart as Top 40. I honestly have never heard folk that bad anywhere else. I'm not sure where they find it.  And so much blues.  So much!  Why?

Because they know we're depressed with Duluth radio. And if a few thousand baby boomers pack themselves into Bayfront each year to hear it, that means the rest of the city feels the same. And surely all those Blues Fest goers are avid KUMD listeners too.

As for the mp3 argument, I don't have mp3 hookup in my car yet. That's where my radio listening happens. Though having the iPod and record player for home helps the non-automotive parts of the day go by easier.

I just want to say that it made me quite annoyed to find every station changing especially since I just found 92.1 lite fm and now we have NU92 seriously way too many rock and top 40 stations, I was loving the alternative action on the other stations and The Bridge was for sure my favorite station up here.  I love MPR but sometimes you gotta have the music too and I don't want to pay .99 for all the good songs so I can listen to them, this sucks!!!

Thank you, Barrett, for being the one person to mention KUWS. You are a brave man.

As far as I am concerned, The Bridge was a bad radio station that played some good music. I tried to like it. Lots of other people seemed to like it, but how could you stand the KT Thunstall, Dave Matthews, John Mayer and Jason Mraz block that they would play every hour or so?