It’s been a while since we’ve signed in here, in part because a big part of our raison d’etre was offline for almost two weeks back in June. That provides no excuse for July but we’ve got you covered there too. At any rate, WVEW in Brattleboro, Vermont, our home station, was knocked offline by a hellacious early summer thunderstorm that took out a few commercial and public radio stations too. They were back on within hours but our station — small, charmingly disorganized, occasionally clueless — took longer. It may never be known exactly what happened or why it took so long to fix, but suffice to say, by the 4th of July, WVEW was broadcasting again — long may she wave.
Another big part of our radio operation went down that week — the web stream — which we apparently can’t afford. Music licensing for internet streaming is expensive and calculated on a per listener basis. Which songs, how many listeners — that kind of thing. This implies a reporting requirement. You can get out of it, but you have to pay the licensing agency extra. So while the station figures that one out, no more streaming listeners. In this day and age, for a small station with a tiny broadcasting area (to Exit 1 and beyond!) not having your peeps from away is a drag. But us locals aren’t chopped liver by any means, and most people continue to do their shows.
We are among them! Bubble Wrap continues and while it will be harder for remote listeners to check us out (you might actually have to come to Brattleboro on a Wednesday night from 7-9pm), our local listeners more than compensate. Hi Bob, hi Cam, hi Dan, and Sector G!
There’s another wrinkle to this and it relates to our own ineptitude and in no way implicates the station — we can’t write up a show list for the last two weeks because we lost the notebook. Tis true — somewhere between the station and the house, the notebook disappeared. A complete search of our residential premises has been carried out and the pink and white composition notebook with all our playlists since February of 2016 in it does not appear to be here. It will turn up — I know it will. But where?
More later…got a show tonight… 😉