OR-WA Radio: KXLE's Steve Scellick Hangs Up His Headphones

KXLE 95.3 FM on-air personality Steve Scellick has retired as of Christmas Eve 2020.   He has seen the industry go from spinning vinyl to compact discs to computer generated music in the 30 years he’s been in business.  

“I consider myself an entertainer. I would play the music and interact in between,” Scellick told the The Daily Record News recently. “There is inter-community involvement with promotions and events and that was enjoyable.

“I never talked politics, tended to keep things light.”

The small town market demands meeting the musical needs of the faithful followers, providing news and weather reports. In essence, being the guy people go to be informed, and better still, entertained.

Accountability is everything, KXLE station manager Brad Tacher said.

“I think at the end of each day Steve gave people a thought to think about,” Tacher said. “The most important thing in people’s lives is entertainment and our job is to entertain people with humor or music or a combination of both.

“He had the ability to leave people with a smile, and if you can do that, I would say we’re doing our job.”

Like everything, the radio industry has evolved and changed over the course of time, whether it’s the artists or the way the music is presented or better still, the way it’s delivered on air. Corporations control the delivery, what gets played, how it gets played for better marketability.

Even with all that, Scellick made it personal, made it fun, keeping his finger on the pulse of the community.

“In the last years, I got pretty laid back and tried to interject some humor,” Scellick said. “I don’t talk politics. I found that something would come in and I’d feel the need to put it out there right away, only to find out it’d been on Twitter for the past 12 hours. Social media changed things and began to take over the news cycle.”