I LO-O-O-V-E RADIO. I love the medium — the ability it has to entertain, inform, interact with listeners. I’ve done television and though it was a blast, it is a cool medium. One-way. But radio is white hot. Immediate. Very now, baby!
A year ago I was hosting Constitutional Public Radio (”CPR for the Heart of America”), an afternoon drive talk show broadcast on a 50,000 watt blowtorch that was heard up and down Florida’s East Coast. The station was a privately owned religious outlet that served up Christian ministries for breakfast, followed later in the day with syndicated conservative talk show fare. Taking the analogy a step further, we offered “CPR” as a two-hour dinnertime appetizer. It was a great place to be broadcasting our show where on a daily basis, we interviewed top national news makers, experts, and even the occasional entertainment personality with a conservative bent.
We took listeners’ phone calls, but we did something else that brought the show up to the next level — a live show on-line chat room. Nicknamed the “Big Blue Ballroom” because of its background screen color, the live chat feature let us interact real-time with our internet listeners who were tuning in on the internet stream that ran concurrent with our over-the-air terrestrial signal. They commented on show topics, typed in questions for our guests, chatted among themselves and became our regular “VIP section” listeners. While their numbers grew, there was always room in the front row for one or two more!
Among those who joined us nearly every day were Anna from Akron, Julie from Stowe Vt., David from Warrenton Va., Lone Star Pundit from Houston, Geoff from St. Louis, Marathon Pundit from Chicago, Lucky Dawg from Albuquerque, Mary Ann from Cleveland, Brainster from Phoenix, SCEagle from Germany, Blogmeister from New York City, Bud from Satellite Beach, Dean from Palm Bay, Gawfer from Southern California, and ThirdWaveDave from Northern California.
They all became more than part of the show. They became family. Because of his interest in what we were trying to accomplish with the program, ThirdWaveDave later joined the team as unofficial show/political advisor, and now helps produce both of my BTR and WDBO shows.
The immensely popular online live Chat Room has been a hallmark of my radio programs since we launched it nearly four years ago on my Sunday night show on WDBO. And if I may take a moment to boast — our live chat room feature put us WAY ahead of any other talk show. What was designed to connect my official radio show website with the radio program has become a staple ingredient in the shows’ success.
One afternoon last Spring, Ed Morrissey of Captain’s Quarters was my guest. He told us he had left his job as a call center manager to jump aboard a new phenom called “Blog Talk Radio“, which was bringing blogging to a new level — interactive radio via the internet.
Total internet radio. Total programming freedom. No advertiser worries. No ad revenue to generate. In other words, carefree radio. Wow! And best of all — it was FREE. I was intrigued.
Not long after Ed’s appearance, I contemplated the notion of moving CPR exclusively to the internet on Blog Talk Radio. Ed and I spoke again, he “hooked me up”, and the rest is “histoire”!
In the 11 months since I’ve been there, Blog Talk Radio has experienced explosive growth . It’s had its growing pains too — it’s a nascent technology — but the possibilities are as exciting as any media I’ve ever experienced.
Thousands of amateur radio hosts are already making a name for themselves and have developed hundreds of followers who “tune in” to hear the show live or later at a time of their own convenience to hear it archived.
Just to show you how successful this little idea hatched by BTR’s CEO Alan Levy is, this week BTR is profiled in Conde Nast’s “Portfolio.com”:
“(Shaun) Dailey’s program airs on BlogTalkRadio.com, an enterprise that, in 18 months, has become the dominant player in the latest media trend, one that allows anyone with a Web connection to host a talk show on any topic at any time of day. It is the newest form of new media; the audio version of the internet blog.
“Everybody in our world—when I’m talking about our world I’m talking about over-the-air broadcasting and our media universe—is obviously watching this phenomenon closely and adapting as we go along,” says Dennis Wharton, spokesman for the National Association of Broadcasters.
Aspiring broadcasters log on and select the length, time slot, genre, and topic of their show. BlogTalk provides the internet broadcast capability and a telephone system that allows hosts to take live callers, all for free.
It sounds like the kind of service that would draw U.F.O. watchers and religious prophesiers—and it does. But internet talk radio is also rapidly getting attention from prominent hosts, guests, and broadcasting companies—especially in the wake of the blog phenomenon, which mainstream media outlets were slow to accept. (my emphasis)
[…]
With its 40,000-plus shows, BlogTalk can bring in more than two million listeners each month, according to the company. In December, the site enjoyed about 80,000 listeners a day. That makes it a gnat compared to, say, National Public Radio, whose listenership over the last year has remained steady at 26 million. But BlogTalk is one of a half-dozen startups hoping to dominate the online talk space, and it has been growing fast.
“I think that [BlogTalk] represents something that’s far greater than itself,” says Michael Harrison, publisher of Talkers magazine, a leading talk-radio-industry trade publication. “There’s a whole bunch of new Web-based entities that I predict will be the media stations of the future.”
[…]
The online amateur-radio niche is still sparsely populated, and as yet, largely undefined. BlogTalk is one of the few companies that currently offers a medium explicitly designed to emulate traditional radio, and this may be part of the key to the company’s relative success.
Not surprisingly, Alan Levy, BlogTalk’s founder and C.E.O., believes companies like these will eventually come to replace traditional radio altogether. “To me, the reason why NPR or CBS Radio News is big is because right now, the only way to listen to the radio…is terrestrial,” he says. “When there are other alternatives…you’re going to see these audiences vanish; they’ll migrate to places that they want.”
Levy’s hype aside, some in traditional radio admit that services like his will likely start coming into the mainstream very soon. “It all comes down to the show,” said Walter Sabo, C.E.O. of Sabo Media, a consulting firm that counts a number of radio networks, including 
Sirius Satellite Radio (and Parade magazine, which is owned by Condé Nast’s parent company) among its clients. “People listen to shows that they like and if the show is good, it doesn’t matter what the source is. The medium itself is meaningless.”
The internet is THE new medium. Right now, I’m writing this post which will appear on my internet website, while I listen to my favorite music on Slacker, an internet radio that plays my preferred selection (today it’s smooth jazz) in a constant stream, commercial free. In just a bit, I’ll log on to watch “el Rushbo” on the ditto-webcam as he does his show. After that? Any one of my pick of show offerings at Blog Talk Radio.
The internet has opened a world where I’ve made new friends with common interests and shared enthusiasms. We converse by instant chat on Yahoo Instant Message, we occasionally play a game of backgammon, share files, and communicate via email. Every week I record a fresh installment and upload it as an MP3 file to an ftp folder where it magically appears on the radio magazine Voice of Liberty Podcast Network. It’s a whole new world at my fingertips.
This new medium is accessible to anyone with a computer, internet connection and a telephone or VoIP service such as Skype. Connectivity, baby. The name of the new game. I’m delighted to be part of it. I love the new radio!
*****
