KEXP’s website and online streaming were down Friday morning after a power outage hit the Seattle radio station, though its over-the-air broadcast was back and running.
The outage started around midnight, and the station was on and off for a while before it was “knocked offline by a major power outage” between 2 and 3 a.m., said Dashel Schueler, KEXP’s director of marketing and communications. Schueler didn’t know the cause of the outage.
The station’s backup power system, known as an uninterruptible power supply (UPS), also failed.
“There’s no power to the server room infrastructure because the UPS that is supposed to protect all of that gear has failed,” Schueler said. Staff are trying to power critical devices to restore services while they wait for the UPS to be repaired or for a workaround that bypasses it.
There’s no estimate yet for when streaming will return.
Listeners in the Seattle area can tune in at 90.3 FM. The outage affects the KEXP.org stream and the station’s mobile app. KEXP estimates about 175,000 people stream its live broadcast each week, and another 85,000 listen to its shows on-demand.
The outage also took down 92.7 KREV, the station KEXP now owns in the San Francisco Bay Area, which relies on KEXP’s Seattle-based digital infrastructure. Because KEXP’s DJs pick songs live rather than playing a preset playlist, underwriting breaks vary in timing and length, Schueler said. DJs fire the separate Seattle and Bay Area spots manually and at the same time.
KREV was back by around 8:30 to 8:45 a.m., running on a barebones setup KEXP typically uses for remote broadcasts, Schueler said. Listeners may notice some issues while the station gets everything put back together.
Around 7:30 a.m., KEXP DJ John Richards read messages on air from listeners across Seattle who were happy to have the station back — terrestrially at least.
A few posts from listeners on X and Bluesky referenced the streaming outage.
