On Saturday, May 7th, 2011, I will be doing the 500th show of Twirl Radio! Our usual two hours gets expanded to three for the special event–this one time only! So look for it from 4-7pm Pacific that day, on
our community access station, The Voice, here in Sacramento, California. The organization that hosts our community radio and TV stations is called Access Sacramento.
A little history, for those history buffs among you. However, if you’re prone to getting bored easily, please skip past the next few paragraphs! 🙂 I started the show in January, 1998. It featured nearly all commercial music–which was still a viable artform at the time. It was a blend of alternative and Americana music, but usually by mid-range artists who were starting to not see much airplay anymore, as the commercial airwaves here in the U.S. were starting to change their focus. Our station broadcasted on cable, on a low-power FM frequency for a few years (reached about a 15-20 mile radius, not all of it well), and on the internet, back before the scary royalty laws kicked in. I did my show for 5 years, and left in 2003, when we lost the internet and FM, and I lost pretty much any audience I may have had. I did a few months worth of looping shows on Live365, which was in its infancy, but didn’t find that to be very rewarding, as there
really weren’t any social media with which to promote my show.
There were a few fits and starts–I made a couple of attempts to come back. Finally, in September, 2006–I made my “for real” comeback. Access Sacramento purchased an organizational version of Live365–which covers all royalty payments, and streams the signal. Social media like MySpace, and eventually Facebook, became a force in the world. And all of a sudden, there were tons of great indie artists looking for outlets to play their music. The perfect storm.
So now I’ve done 4-1/2 more years of these Twirl shows. And 1-1/2 years of The California Diner on Recharged Radio (www.rechargedradio.com). And I’ll be doing a big, fun, semi-retrospective show on Twirl to celebrate the 500 Twirl shows. (The count of 500 doesn’t include the California Diner shows–there’s
70 more of those!)
I hope you’ll join us! We’ll have interviews, greetings from artists and fellow radio folk, and even some cringeworthy airchecks from my very earliest days in radio, laid bare, for all to hear!
Thanks so much for the opportunity to share nearly 500 Saturday afternoons with you. And the opportunity to do many, many more! See you on Saturday, May 7th, 4-7pm Pacific, http://www.twirlradio.com!
Leave a comment
No comments yet.
Twirl Radio 
Leave a Reply