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I'll miss <a href="http://www.wxrt.com/">WXRT</a>, one of the coolest and most original radio stations I've ever listened to, commercial or otherwise. They have their niche, which is really several niches including blues, and for being a big city radio station, they really feel down to earth and in touch with the city. They play a lot of local music, support local artists, bring in good concerts, have lots of great on-air appearances, and break interesting artists. Right now they're sponsoring a program with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra which is essentially street-level music education with WXRT people and CSO performers. I'll miss the personalities, especially Marty Lennartz (and The Regular Guy movie reviews, coincidence...?). It's a station you can almost always count on to having something good to hear. I won't miss <a href="http://www.q101.com/">Q101</a>, "Chicago's alternative since 1992." Wow, you almost gotta blow the dust off that slogan! 13 years is a long time to be an alternative, and like other alt.stations in the nations, Q101 has stayed Staunchly Alternative -- but as we all know, "alternative" has become it's own kind of mainstream, one which I am not a fan of anymore. When I was coming to visit NPU as a high school senior, I thought that Q101 was the coolest station on earth; they sounded like our local college station! But then the music industry changed, much like the Borg refactoring sheild and phaser frequencies. I won't make disparaging, out of touch old guy remarks about "what Alternative is" or "what Alternative isn't," but I will say that when Alternative stopped being an adjective, got a capital letter and became a noun it stopped breaking molds and started, to turn a phrase, "thinking inside the bun." Yuck. I think I would almost rather listen to any other station in Chicago, maybe even B96. Not because Q101 "sold out" and I have something to prove (I think that was inevitable given their narrow-yet-demographically-lucrative scope), but because now, 11 years later, I'm just not interested in the alternative they offer. It took me a while to realize that, but now I almost never tune in to Q101. Especially not during "Love Line."