I dunno what Utah Phillips' local NPR station is like, but that situation doesn't pertain at KUOW-FM, my local NPR affiliate. News programs from NPR, Public Radio International, and the BBC, along with some excellent local programming, including hour-long monthly interviews with the Mayor of Seattle, the King County Executive, and the State Governor, and other officials, during which people can call in and ask tough questions—which, believe me, they do! And KUOW has some of its own overseas correspondents.

This, along with interviews and features with authors, musicians, and other notables, both in and traveling through the area. The interviewers, Steve Sher, Ross Reynolds, Marcy Silman, and the rest are sharp and on top of things.

Weekends, along with plenty of news, are usually given over to programs such as "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me!" (comedy news quiz), Prairie Home Companion, This American Life, and similar features.

I can't complain at all. Excellent coverage, along with no perceivable biases. About as genuinely "fair and balanced" as there is out there.

Just had to get that in there.

Don Firth

P. S. By the way, there are two other NPR affiliated stations in this area:   KBCS-FM in Bellevue, across Lake Washington from Seattle (Bellevue Community College), which, along with the NPR news features, plays a lot of folk music of various kinds; and KPLU-FM in Tacoma (about 30 miles south of Seattle, at Pacific Lutheran University). Same news source, but local programming is mostly jazz.