Congratulations, KNHC! Seattle’s student-run C89.5 is celebrating its fiftieth anniversary

Half a cen­tu­ry. Five decades. Six hun­dred months. Close to 20,000 days.

How­ev­er you slice it, fifty years is a long time. And it’s an espe­cial­ly long time in the unpre­dictable, unsta­ble radio indus­try, where busi­ness mod­els are finicky and for­mat changes com­mon. Yet that’s how long stu­dent-run KNHC, based out of Seat­tle’s Nathan Hale High School, has been in con­tin­u­ous oper­a­tion.

Bet­ter known to its loy­al lis­ten­ers as C89.5 (89.5 FM is the sta­tion’s loca­tion on the good ‘ol radio dial, while the C stands for Com­mu­ni­ca­tions), KHNC is renowned around the globe as the world’s old­est remain­ing dance radio sta­tion. It broad­casts a mix of EDM (elec­tron­ic dance music) and relat­ed gen­res — from trance to house to indus­tri­al — with a bit of pop rock mixed in, com­mer­cial free.

The sta­tion was con­ceived towards the end of the 1960s and start­ed out as a low pow­er AM radio sta­tion. By the autumn of 1970, KHNC had applied for, and received, an FM con­struc­tion per­mit. It began broad­cast­ing over the FM band from Wedg­wood Hill on Jan­u­ary 25th, 1971: fifty years ago today.

Orig­i­nal­ly, C89.5 broad­cast at just ten watts. By the end of 1972, its pow­er had increased to 320 watts, and by the end of 1974, 1,500 watts.

Today, KNHC broad­casts at 8,500 watts from Enter­com’s back­up tow­er on Cougar Moun­tain in the Issaquah Alps. Hun­dreds of thou­sands of peo­ple lis­ten to C89.5 over the air in the Seat­tle area. But the sta­tion is also avail­able around the world — and in high qual­i­ty, too — via Inter­net streaming.

Like NPR affil­i­ates KUOW and KNKX, and the UW’s KEXP, KNHC is a pub­lic radio sta­tion. It belongs to the peo­ple, and it is sus­tained through the sup­port of its lis­ten­ers. (I’m one of them: I’ve donat­ed to keep those turnta­bles spinning!)

How­ev­er, unlike those sta­tions, KHNC is run in part by high school stu­dents. It’s thus, in some respects, the radio equiv­a­lent of a teach­ing hospital.

That is unques­tion­ably part of its appeal. There’s noth­ing more sat­is­fy­ing as a lis­ten­er than to hear from young peo­ple learn­ing the craft in between enjoy­ing Seat­tle’s hottest music. Though the sta­tion does air pub­lic ser­vice announce­ments and spon­sor­ship mes­sages, almost all of what you’ll hear in a giv­en hour will be dance tracks — some­times beau­ti­ful­ly mixed by a DJ dur­ing one of the sta­tion’s shows, like dur­ing the 5 PM hour on week­days, known as the Dri­ve at Five.

Even the sta­tion’s sweep­ers reflect its quirky, whole­some, music-first personality.

“While they’re spin­ning the news, we’re spin­ning Seat­tle’s hottest music!” exults one. “Talk is over­rat­ed, so we’re going to leave this right here!” goes another.

I was in high school myself when I first dis­cov­ered C89.5. Since then, it has con­tin­u­ous­ly occu­pied the the fore­most posi­tion in my radio pre­sets. I only need to press “1” on my remote or con­sole in order to tune to the sta­tion when I am in lis­ten­ing range. (When trav­el­ing, I make use of the Inter­net stream.)

Pret­ty much every aspect of C89.5 meets my cri­te­ria for what goes into a beloved insti­tu­tion. As men­tioned, it’s not-for-prof­it. Pub­licly owned. Run by ded­i­cat­ed staff and stu­dents learn­ing about radio. And, of course, it plays the most upbeat, high ener­gy, dance­able tunes any­where on the radio dial.

It’s music you can work to — and work out to.

It’s music you can write to, too! Most of the posts I’ve filed over the years for this blog have been writ­ten with the help of C89.5. It’s arguably the clos­est thing that the Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate has to a soundtrack.

In recog­ni­tion of its excel­lent ser­vice to the peo­ple of the Pacif­ic North­west, Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee and King Coun­ty Exec­u­tive Dow Con­stan­tine have both hon­ored KHNC with state­ments and procla­ma­tions. We at NPI thank them for pay­ing trib­ute to one of Cas­ca­di­a’s finest institutions.

On behalf of our team, I’m hon­ored to present a trib­ute of our own: a list of fifty dance­able tunes that I know of because I heard them on C89.5.

Many of these are songs I’ve nev­er heard played on any oth­er radio sta­tion in Seat­tle. Even today, in the age of YouTube, Spo­ti­fy, Pan­do­ra, and the rest, KHNC is still a great way to hear sweet new music. Props to every­one who has helped keep this fan­tas­tic sta­tion on the air for five decades. Here’s to the next fifty!

Fifty great dance tunes heard on C89.5 FM Seattle

Note this list includes orig­i­nal songs as well as remix­es, span­ning a vari­ety of elec­tron­ic dance music sub­gen­res. Click a link to hear the song. Enjoy! 

1. Iio: At The End
2. Freema­sons fea­tur­ing Aman­da Wil­son: Love On My Mind
3. Sun­f­reakz fea­tur­ing Andrea Brit­ton: Count­ing Down The Days
4. Sim­ply Red: Sunrise
5. The Shapeshifters (aka Shape UK): Lola’s Theme
6. Tri­ton­al fea­tur­ing Phoebe Ryan: Now Or Never
7. Eric Pry­dz: Generate
8. David Guet­ta & Sia: Flames
9. Glob­al Dee­jays: What A Feel­ing (Pop Radio Edit)
10. One‑T + Cool‑T: The Mag­ic Key
11. Black Rock fea­tur­ing Debra Andrew: Blue Water
12. Sep­tem­ber: Satellites
13. The Chainsmok­ers fea­tur­ing Emi­ly War­ren: Side Effects
14. Roc Project fea­tur­ing Tina Are­na: Never
15. Milky: Just The Way You Are
16. Cozi: Sta­mi­na
17. Jupiter Ris­ing: Electropop
18. Edun: Put ‘Em Up
19. Marly: You Nev­er Know
20. Sophie Ellis-Bex­tor: Mixed Up World
21. Sun­set Strip­pers: Falling Stars
22. Star Pilots: In The Heat Of The Night
23. Kylie Minogue: Red Blood­ed Woman
24. Tami Chynn fea­tur­ing Akon: Frozen
25. Tube & Berg­er fea­tur­ing Chrissie Hyn­de: Straight Ahead
26. Eri­ka: I Don’t Know
27. Plumb: In My Arms (Bron­leewe & Bose Radio Edit) 
28. MGMT: Elec­tric Feel (Jus­tice Remix)
29. Galleon: One Sign
30. Lon­go & Wain­wright fea­tur­ing Craig Smart: One Life Stand
31. Soli­taire: I Like Love
32. Andain: Beau­ti­ful Things
33. Deep­est Blue: Deep­est Blue
34. Kygo fea­tur­ing Ella Hen­der­son: Here For You
35. Zhu: Chas­ing Marrakech
36. Mono Mind: I Found My Soul at Marvin­gate (Sofia Tunes Remix)
37. Vice­tone fea­tur­ing Cozi Zuehls­dorff: Way Back
38. The Night: Dif­fer­ent Story
39. Krewella: Team
40. Aly & AJ: Joan Of Arc On The Dance Floor
41. Cas­ca­da: Evac­u­ate The Dancefloor
42. Alexan­dra Stan: Mr. Saxobeat
43. Era Istre­fi: Bonbon
44. Armin van Buuren & Garib­ay fea­tur­ing Olaf Black­wood: I Need You
45. Sam F fea­tur­ing Sophie Rose: Limitless
46. Jonathan Peters fea­tur­ing Maya Azu­ce­na: Hap­py (Radio Edit)
47. Hikaru Uta­da: Exo­dus ’04 (Josh Har­ris vs. The MPC Radio Edit)
48. Wild­boyz fea­tur­ing Ameer­ah: The Sound Of Miss­ing You
49. Krys­tal K: Let’s Get It Right (Radio Cut)
50. Deadmau5 fea­tur­ing Chris James: The Veldt

Many of the songs above are now con­sid­ered classics/throwbacks, and C89.5 has two shows where you can hear them: Anthems (an hour­long spe­cial that airs at noon on week­days, host­ed by the delight­ful­ly tal­ent­ed Har­mo­ny Soleil) and Plan­et Dance (a three-hour music vault spec­tac­u­lar that airs on Thurs­day evenings with the sta­tion’s dynam­ic duo Mel & Matt). Both shows take lis­ten­er requests.

If you love dis­cov­er­ing amaz­ing­ly cool new music, C89.5 has a show for that too: Test Spin, with Gabriel Zus. That not-to-be-missed show cur­rent­ly airs Sat­ur­day nights at 7 PM. An encore pre­sen­ta­tion can be heard on Mon­day nights at 11 PM.

All times ref­er­enced above are Pacific.

There are many, many more C89.5 shows (like New Skool, Old School with the leg­endary DJ Trent Von or Noc­tur­nal Trans­mis­sion with the incom­pa­ra­ble DJ Tamm!) and you can explore them all here.

Con­grat­u­la­tions again, KNHC, and best wish­es from all of us at NPI!