KINK
Encyclopedia
KINK, also kink.fm, is an American commercial broadcast FM
radio station in Portland
, Oregon
. The station began broadcasting Christmas Day, 1968 as “KINK – The Underground Link”. Although KINK’s format has evolved over the years, its sound, philosophy, target audience, marketing, and community involvement have remained fundamentally consistent over its forty year history, a rarity in commercial broadcasting. Many of KINK’s DJs
have been associated with the station for decades, also a rarity in the industry. In the vernacular of commercial radio, KINK is known as a “heritage” radio station.
KINK plays a wide variety of music, including adult album alternative
, rock
, acoustic
, folk
, pop
, blues
, reggae
and new age
. KINK's format also features many special programs, some of which have been in place for many years. These include Lights Out, a late night program of mellow instrumental music that began in 1973, the Sunday Night Blues Room, Sunday Acoustic KINK, and Tranceformation, a weekly selection of trance
and chill music. KINK showcases emerging artists from the Portland, Oregon
area with its nightly Local Music Spotlight feature, as well as independent or unsigned artists with its nightly feature The Gamut.
The station regularly implements special music features that significantly alter its regular format. These features can run for a weekend or an entire season, and often involve extensive input from KINK’s listeners. Such features include the Listener Sets Weekend, the KINK Hall of Fame, Five Decades of KINK, and the KINK Summer School of Rock.
In recent years, KINK has expanded its offerings of live musical performances. The KINK Live Performance Lounge brings together touring artists and KINK listeners for casual three to five song performances with brief interviews, either in the KINK studio’s performance space, or in another location such as a concert venue or coffee shop. These sessions are recorded, and annual compilations are released in the KINK Live CD series, a benefit for Start Making A Reader Today
. The Live Performance Lounge sessions are also videotaped, and are presented on the station’s website with high quality audio.
KINK has a longstanding involvement in major fundraising efforts for Oregon Food Bank. These include the Lights Out CD compilation series, the annual KINK Christmas Concerts and the Waterfront Blues Festival. Together, these have raised more than one million dollars for Oregon Food Bank.
KINK's website has become an increasingly integral part of its identity and outreach, so much so that the station now identifies itself as “kink dot fm” on the air and in its marketing. The website’s content is regularly updated and expanded, with an emphasis on interactivity with the station’s listeners, known as the “KINK Community”. KINK.fm also offers streaming audio of the station’s broadcast, as well as side channels that focus on specific music elements of Kink’s format, such as Lights Out 24/7, the Blues Room, Acoustic Kink, and the New Music Channel. Its antenna at 501.6 meters at 99 kW allows it to be heard across most of Western Oregon
, and has been heard in the Puget Sound
area at times.
The station is a prior employer of screenwriter
Mike Rich
(Nativity Story, Finding Forrester
), who worked there as the morning newsman and co-host early in his career.
In August 2009, CBS Radio
sold the Portland cluster (including KINK) to Alpha Broadcasting, in an effort to focus more on major market stations.
From its first broadcast in 1968 until August 2010 the studios and offices of KINK were located in the headquarters building of KGW
Television (and formerly of KGW radio
), on Southwest Jefferson Street, immediately west of downtown Portland. In August 2010 Alpha Broadcasting moved the station to the PacWest Center
, in downtown.
FM broadcasting
FM broadcasting is a broadcasting technology pioneered by Edwin Howard Armstrong which uses frequency modulation to provide high-fidelity sound over broadcast radio. The term "FM band" describes the "frequency band in which FM is used for broadcasting"...
radio station in Portland
Portland, Oregon
Portland is a city located in the Pacific Northwest, near the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers in the U.S. state of Oregon. As of the 2010 Census, it had a population of 583,776, making it the 29th most populous city in the United States...
, Oregon
Oregon
Oregon is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is located on the Pacific coast, with Washington to the north, California to the south, Nevada on the southeast and Idaho to the east. The Columbia and Snake rivers delineate much of Oregon's northern and eastern...
. The station began broadcasting Christmas Day, 1968 as “KINK – The Underground Link”. Although KINK’s format has evolved over the years, its sound, philosophy, target audience, marketing, and community involvement have remained fundamentally consistent over its forty year history, a rarity in commercial broadcasting. Many of KINK’s DJs
Disc jockey
A disc jockey, also known as DJ, is a person who selects and plays recorded music for an audience. Originally, "disc" referred to phonograph records, not the later Compact Discs. Today, the term includes all forms of music playback, no matter the medium.There are several types of disc jockeys...
have been associated with the station for decades, also a rarity in the industry. In the vernacular of commercial radio, KINK is known as a “heritage” radio station.
KINK plays a wide variety of music, including adult album alternative
Adult album alternative
Adult album alternative is a radio format. A spinoff from the album-oriented rock format, its roots trace to the 1960s and 1970s from the earlier freeform and progressive formats....
, rock
Rock music
Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music...
, acoustic
Acoustic music
Acoustic music comprises music that solely or primarily uses instruments which produce sound through entirely acoustic means, as opposed to electric or electronic means...
, folk
Folk music
Folk music is an English term encompassing both traditional folk music and contemporary folk music. The term originated in the 19th century. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted by mouth, as music of the lower classes, and as music with unknown composers....
, pop
Pop music
Pop music is usually understood to be commercially recorded music, often oriented toward a youth market, usually consisting of relatively short, simple songs utilizing technological innovations to produce new variations on existing themes.- Definitions :David Hatch and Stephen Millward define pop...
, blues
Blues
Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...
, reggae
Reggae
Reggae is a music genre first developed in Jamaica in the late 1960s. While sometimes used in a broader sense to refer to most types of Jamaican music, the term reggae more properly denotes a particular music style that originated following on the development of ska and rocksteady.Reggae is based...
and new age
New Age music
New Age music is music of various styles intended to create artistic inspiration, relaxation, and optimism. It is used by listeners for yoga, massage, meditation, and reading as a method of stress management or to create a peaceful atmosphere in their home or other environments, and is often...
. KINK's format also features many special programs, some of which have been in place for many years. These include Lights Out, a late night program of mellow instrumental music that began in 1973, the Sunday Night Blues Room, Sunday Acoustic KINK, and Tranceformation, a weekly selection of trance
Trance music
Trance is a genre of electronic dance music that developed in the 1990s.:251 It is generally characterized by a tempo of between 125 and 150 bpm,:252 repeating melodic synthesizer phrases, and a musical form that builds up and breaks down throughout a track...
and chill music. KINK showcases emerging artists from the Portland, Oregon
Portland, Oregon
Portland is a city located in the Pacific Northwest, near the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers in the U.S. state of Oregon. As of the 2010 Census, it had a population of 583,776, making it the 29th most populous city in the United States...
area with its nightly Local Music Spotlight feature, as well as independent or unsigned artists with its nightly feature The Gamut.
The station regularly implements special music features that significantly alter its regular format. These features can run for a weekend or an entire season, and often involve extensive input from KINK’s listeners. Such features include the Listener Sets Weekend, the KINK Hall of Fame, Five Decades of KINK, and the KINK Summer School of Rock.
In recent years, KINK has expanded its offerings of live musical performances. The KINK Live Performance Lounge brings together touring artists and KINK listeners for casual three to five song performances with brief interviews, either in the KINK studio’s performance space, or in another location such as a concert venue or coffee shop. These sessions are recorded, and annual compilations are released in the KINK Live CD series, a benefit for Start Making A Reader Today
Start Making A Reader Today
Start Making A Reader Today is a non-profit volunteer-driven tutoring program local to Oregon for at-risk K-3 readers. SMART was developed by Neil Goldschmidt in 1992...
. The Live Performance Lounge sessions are also videotaped, and are presented on the station’s website with high quality audio.
KINK has a longstanding involvement in major fundraising efforts for Oregon Food Bank. These include the Lights Out CD compilation series, the annual KINK Christmas Concerts and the Waterfront Blues Festival. Together, these have raised more than one million dollars for Oregon Food Bank.
KINK's website has become an increasingly integral part of its identity and outreach, so much so that the station now identifies itself as “kink dot fm” on the air and in its marketing. The website’s content is regularly updated and expanded, with an emphasis on interactivity with the station’s listeners, known as the “KINK Community”. KINK.fm also offers streaming audio of the station’s broadcast, as well as side channels that focus on specific music elements of Kink’s format, such as Lights Out 24/7, the Blues Room, Acoustic Kink, and the New Music Channel. Its antenna at 501.6 meters at 99 kW allows it to be heard across most of Western Oregon
Oregon
Oregon is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is located on the Pacific coast, with Washington to the north, California to the south, Nevada on the southeast and Idaho to the east. The Columbia and Snake rivers delineate much of Oregon's northern and eastern...
, and has been heard in the Puget Sound
Puget Sound
Puget Sound is a sound in the U.S. state of Washington. It is a complex estuarine system of interconnected marine waterways and basins, with one major and one minor connection to the Strait of Juan de Fuca and the Pacific Ocean — Admiralty Inlet being the major connection and...
area at times.
The station is a prior employer of screenwriter
Screenwriter
Screenwriters or scriptwriters or scenario writers are people who write/create the short or feature-length screenplays from which mass media such as films, television programs, Comics or video games are based.-Profession:...
Mike Rich
Mike Rich
Mike Rich is an American screenwriter best known for his writing on sports-related films.-Early life:A graduate of Oregon State University's College of Business, Rich began his media career as a news reporter for a Portland radio station, KINK...
(Nativity Story, Finding Forrester
Finding Forrester
EnglishFinding Forrester is a 2000 American drama film written by Mike Rich and directed by Gus Van Sant. A black American teenager, Jamal Wallace , is invited into a prestigious private high school. By chance, Jamal befriends a reclusive writer, William Forrester , through whom he refines his...
), who worked there as the morning newsman and co-host early in his career.
In August 2009, CBS Radio
CBS Radio
CBS Radio, Inc., formerly known as Infinity Broadcasting Corporation, is one of the largest owners and operators of radio stations in the United States, third behind main rival Clear Channel Communications and Cumulus Media. CBS Radio owns around 130 radio stations across the country...
sold the Portland cluster (including KINK) to Alpha Broadcasting, in an effort to focus more on major market stations.
From its first broadcast in 1968 until August 2010 the studios and offices of KINK were located in the headquarters building of KGW
KGW
KGW is an NBC affiliate television station serving the Portland, Oregon metropolitan area. The station broadcasts its digital signal on VHF channel 8, from its transmitter in Portland. It also produces segments and serves as the Portland bureau for Northwest Cable News , which is also owned by...
Television (and formerly of KGW radio
KPOJ
KPOJ is a radio station located in the Portland, Oregon, area. It airs a progressive talk format and was an original Air America Radio affiliate.-History:...
), on Southwest Jefferson Street, immediately west of downtown Portland. In August 2010 Alpha Broadcasting moved the station to the PacWest Center
PacWest Center
PacWest Center is an office skyscraper in Portland, Oregon. At , it is the fourth-tallest building in Portland. The 29-story building was designed by Hugh Stubbins & Associates of Cambridge, Massachusetts and completed in 1984....
, in downtown.