AFTER SIX AND A HALF YEARS of skewering the media on public radio, Bill Radke is pulling the plug on Rewind. It’s not as though the KUOW-FM-produced show were losing audience: It airs three times a week locally and on about 100 National Public Radio stations around the country. NPR was set to renew its contract for another year.
But Radke says he wants to do something new. “It’s plateaued,” he says. “I don’t want it to be the only thing in my obituary.”
He says he was under no pressure from KUOW-FM or NPR to kill the mix of satire and straightforward media analysis, which will finish its run in late March.
As for his future, Radke claims he has nothing lined up. “I really don’t know what I’m going to do,” he says. He’ll take a look at doing other work at KUOW-FM or somewhere else in radio, or leave radio altogether. Before Rewind, Radke was a stand-up comedian and a morning host and news director at the University of Washington station.
