KUBE (FM)

KUBE (93.3 FM) is a commercial FM radio station licensed to Seattle, Washington. The station airs a UC radio format and is owned and operated by iHeartMedia. The studios and offices are on Elliott Avenue West in Seattle's Belltown neighborhood northwest of downtown. The transmitter is located on Cougar Mountain.
History.
KBLE-FM.
The station signed on the air on May 6, 1964, as KBLE-FM. It was owned by Eastside Broadcasting, as the sister station to KNBX-AM 1050. While KNBX aired country music, KBLE-FM aired a Christian radio format. It was powered at 6,600 watts, a fraction of its current output.
Within a few years, the formats were flipped. KBLE-FM began playing country music while the AM station changed its call letters to KBLE and served as a Christian radio station. KBLE-FM's power was increased to 20,000 watts and its transmitter was moved to Cougar Mountain in Issaquah.
In the 1970s, the stations were acquired by Ostrander-Wilson, which returned the religious format to KBLE-FM. It also increased its power to 100,000 watts, making it audible from Olympia to Mount Vernon and around Puget Sound.
The Northwest's New 93 FM/Musicradio! KUBE 93 FM.
On March the 17th of 1981 A.K.A. St. Partick's Day after First Media bought the station, KBLE-FM flipped to an automated Top 40/CHR format as "The Northwest's New 93 FM, We've put our money where our music is!" Their first song was "Use ta Be My Girl" by The O'Jays, followed by "Beast of Burden" by The Rolling Stones.
Then on July the 8th of 1981 at 5:04 P.M. 93 FM officially relaunched the station with a live and local on air staff of DJ's. On April then 2nd of 1982 the call letters was changed to KUBE and the station became known to everyone in both Seattle and Tacoma as "Musicradio! KUBE 93 FM". Shortly after the switch to Top 40/CHR KUBE went shot up to the top 5 in the Seattle radio market ratings (occasionally reaching #1 in some books and target demographics). In 1989, Cook Inlet Broadcasters acquired the station.
KUBE competed against Top 40 powerhouse KPLZ (owned by Golden West Broadcasting), creating an intense rivalry between the two stations through the rest of the 1980's, The KUBE Jocks during this period include Bobby Case, Diane McKenzie, Tommy Hutyler, Kimberly "Gilly" Johnson, Barry Beck, Michele Grosenick, Thomas "Shotgun Tom" Kelly, Glenn Beck, Wendy Christopher, Mark Edwards, Gerald "Jerry" Hart, Tremaine "Trey" Hernandez, Gary Bryan, "Hollywood" Humphries, "Truck" Rogers, Bradley "Brad" Spencer, with Shadoe Stevens, and Casey "Shaggy" Kasem, plus from July 1981 to September 1995 The KUBE Morning Show was hosted by Charlie Brown (formerly of KJR), Tyrone "Ty" Flint (formerly of KVI), and Mary White.
KUBE 93.
In November 1991, KUBE shifted to a Rhythmic contemporary direction as "KUBE 93 Jams", and maintained strong ratings during this period.
In March 1994, Cook Inlet sold KUBE to a partnership between New Century Management and the Ackerley Group called New Century Media. (KJR and soft adult contemporary station KLTX joined the group in July.) Also that month, likely because of the public outcry of a "gangland-style" drive by shooting of a Ballard High School student (which some claimed was motivated by hip hop music and a growing gangster culture in Seattle), as well as their audience's changing music tastes, KUBE shifted to a hybrid Rhythmic/Modern Rock format as simply "KUBE 93." The station began using the slogans "Seattle's New Music Revolution" and "Channel X," a popular way to identify modern rock stations at the time. However, the station's ratings were not impressive with the format, and by November of that year, the station flipped back to a full-blown Rhythmic format. The station quickly regained its top 10 status, usually peaking at #1 in several books for the next several years.
In February 1998, the Ackerley Group bought the station outright from New Century.
For many years, KUBE marketed itself as "Seattle's #1 Hit Music Station, KUBE 93." iHeartMedia (then known as Clear Channel Communications) purchased KUBE, along with sister stations KJR, KJR-FM, KFNK and outdoor advertiser AK Media, from Ackerley Communications in 2001. On April 1, 2009, Clear Channel acquired Top 40 rival KBKS from CBS Radio. At the time, KUBE was competing against Rhythmic AC station KQMV (Movin' 92.5), owned by Sandusky. KUBE changed its slogan to "More Non-Stop Music," and then to "Hits & Hip-Hop".
KUBE was the home of "The T-Man Show" morning show, which aired from September 1995 to September 2009, when "The T-Man" retired to become a professional poker player. The show featured Robert "The T-Man" Tepper, who was known for never showing his face to audiences, as well as co-hosts Pasty Dave (who was the show's producer), Hot Shot Scott, Dump Truck Guy, Ham Sandwich Man, Stephen Kilbreath, Vinnie The Pooh and Tari Free. The show was also briefly syndicated through Premiere Radio Networks, and was heard on KKRZ in Portland, KYLD in San Francisco and several other cities.
Shellie Hart, longtime midday DJ and music director for the station, was let go in November 2011 because of budget cuts issued by Clear Channel. Hart had been with the station since 1991, except for a brief 3-year period between 1996 and 1999, when Hart programmed modern rock station KEDJ Phoenix. Hart is currently at KRWM.
Despite many years of high ratings, around 2011, however, KUBE's ratings began declining, largely because of poor programming and marketing decisions. KUBE was also no exception to company-wide budget cuts at Clear Channel, with several long-time personalities replaced with voicetracked talent from outside of the market. New competition from KQMV and KHTP took away some of KUBE's listeners.
KUBE also rotated through a few morning shows after "The T-Man Show" ended, such as Eddie Francis & Karen Wild, The JV Show (syndicated from sister KYLD), "The Breakfast Club", and DJ SupaSam. None of these programming changes resulted in any ratings improvement for the station. In the December 2015 Nielsen ratings period for the Seattle market, KUBE was ranked #13 with a 2.3 share.
Power 93.3.
As part of a major format shuffle involving four of iHeart's Seattle radio stations, on January 19, 2016, at Noon, after playing "Whatever You Like" by T.I., KUBE's long-time Rhythmic CHR format and branding moved to lower-power sister station KKBW (104.9 FM), displacing that station's Active Rock format. At the same time, 93.3 adopted KBKS's Mainstream CHR format, added in some newer rhythmic titles to the playlist, and rebranded as "Power 93.3." The first song on "Power" was "Sorry" by Justin Bieber. This returned the 93.3 frequency in Seattle to a Top 40/Mainstream format for the first time in nearly 24 years. The station also brought in a new live and local air staff which included Carla Marie & Anthony for mornings, Kat Fisher for middays, Kwame Dankwa on afternoon drive and Brady for evenings.
The station took on the KPWK call letters on January 26, 2016; the KUBE call letters moved to KKBW the same day. Ratings did not improve much, with the station usually ranked in the mid-2 to mid-3 share of the market. Meanwhile, KQMV saw a big ratings boost at the time, sometimes finishing in first place. In the April 2018 ratings, KPWK was ranked #18 with a 2.8 share, well behind KQMV, which had a 6.8 share.
Return of KUBE.
On May 3, 2018, at 3 p.m., after playing "Wait" by Maroon 5, KPWK flipped back to Rhythmic CHR, returning to the "KUBE" branding, as "KUBE 93.3." The first song on the revived KUBE was "Nice for What" by Drake. Concurrently with the move, KBKS also returned to its previous Mainstream Top 40 format, effectively reversing the ill-fated 2016 format changes. The KUBE call letters returned on May 11, 2018. Positioned as "Seattle's #1 for Hip Hop," the playlist is focused on current hip hop hits as well as some gold/re-current hip hop titles from the 1990s and 2000s.
HD Radio.
KUBE broadcasts in the HD Radio format.
When KUBE signed on HD operations in 2006, KUBE's HD2 sub-channel carried a hip hop format branded as "KUBE 2." In 2009, it was replaced with a broad-based Rhythmic format known as "WiLD". The "WiLD" format was patterned after most Clear Channel owned Rhythmic Top 40 stations by playing Mainstream Rhythmic Pop/Dance tracks and very few Hip Hop/R&B tracks. This would later be replaced with a children's radio format branded as "Kids Club Radio." From December 11, 2017 through May 3, 2018, KPWK-HD2 carried the rhythmic CHR format as "KUBE 93 HD2," after the 104.9 frequency was divested. After KUBE was revived on the analog/HD1, KUBE-HD2 flipped to a classic hip hop format. On June 26, 2019, KUBE-HD2 changed to iHeart's "Pride Radio" network, which airs Top 40/Dance music targeting the LGBTQ community. This marks the second such format in Seattle, the other being Entercom's "Channel Q" format airing on KNDD-HD2/K277AE.