Often NPR affiliates have excellent local programming as well as the NPR features.

An embarrassment of riches here in Seattle. The main NPR affiliate nearby is KUOW, based in the University District. They run a lot of the NPR features (Morning Edition; All Things Considered; Car Talk; Wait, Wait; Don't Tell Me; and one of my favorites, Says Who?), but they also run a lot of local features. Once a month, an hour-long interview/discussion each with the Mayor and the King County Executive, often with city and county council persons and other local politicians, especially when there are pending issues such as doing something about Seattle's abysmal rapid transit system (or lack thereof); then a weekly discussion with a newspaper columnist in Victoria, B. C.. Most of the interview programs run for a full hour (less the usual station IDs and occasional promos for up-coming programs, of course), and include visiting or local musicians with a performance coming up. KUOW's programming is almost all talk and discussion, but it does include things like Prairie Home Companion and American Routes. The Swing Years and Beyond, locally produced, is popular music of the 1920s through the 1950s, and it plays Saturdays from 7:00 p.m. to midnight.

It isn't just a parochial little station off in the far corner of the radio dial, it's the second most listened to radio station in the Seattle-Tacoma market and the most listened to news radio station in the state.

KPLU in Tacoma (30 miles south of Seattle), based at Pacific Lutheran University, has most of the same NPR programs, but almost all of their local music programming is jazz.

KBCS, at Bellevue Community College across Lake Washington from Seattle, plays quite a bit of folk music, such as Lunch with Folks from noon to 3:00 p.m. weekdays, and a whole variety of folk and traditional music on weekends.

I listen mostly to KUOW, but I switch around a fair amount, depending on who's playing what when.

Don Firth