Monday, December 24, 2012

Seattle Radio: ‘I Felt Like Every Day, I Was Lying’

Marty Riemer talks about his exit from The Mountain

Last Thursday, radio personality Marty Riemer walked away from a well-paying job at KMTT 103.7 FM, otherwise known as The Mountain, because he just ... can’t ... work there anymore. 
“Everyone from my agent to my parents have said, ‘Are you insane? You have a family! You need health care!’” Riemer said the other morning. “But I felt like every day, I was lying.” 
Since 1997, Riemer has felt “spoiled” for working at a radio station that he would surely listen to, even if he wasn’t already on the staff. 
“But now it’s no longer one that I would listen to,” he said. “And I don’t want to feel like a sell-out.” 
Riemer, 50, started inching toward the exit earlier this year, when the station changed its format from an eclectic mix of rock and new music to include more classic hits: Eddie Money. Supertramp. REO Speedwagon. 
For the station, the change in approach was a business decision, but to Riemer, it felt like the death of something, and that it was time for him to go. 
This is no small thing for him, or for longtime Seattle radio listeners who have followed him for years. 
Riemer, whose deep voice conveys an easygoing intelligence, has been part of the region’s airwaves since he was 13, when he got weekend work at KGRG, the Green River Community College station in his native Auburn. 
He has worked at KZOK, KJR and the late Seattle station KXRX, where he says he was the first person to report the death of Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain. (He was tipped off by a friend of the dispatcher for an electrical firm doing work at Cobain’s Lake Washington home.) 
When Riemer finally reached The Mountain in 1997, it wasn’t just radio. It was a handcrafted format; classic rock layered with new music that he hadn’t heard anywhere else. 
“I’m not retiring,” Riemer said. “You only do that when you’re old or rich, and I am only one of the two. You have to be both in order to retire.”

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