"I never forgot that New Year's Eve when Aunt Bea awakened me to watch 1944 come in. I've never forgotten any of those people or any of the voices we would hear on the radio. Though the truth is, with the passing of each New Year's Eve, those voices do seem to grow dimmer and dimmer."
- Radio Days
written and directed by
Woody Allen
Gosh things have been busy around here lately.
At the beginning of December, I was asked to return to the Board of our Community Radio Station and to resume its Presidency. I can't say I was very happy about this turn of events. The request should have been enormously gratifying to my ego, but it wasn't. I had been enjoying a time of just working on my own show while others ran the station. It didn't help that shortly after returning to the Board, our ability to broadcast over the airwaves suddenly ended. Our webstream was still running, so it was fairly evident that there was a problem at our transmitter site. Our studio is downtown, but our transmitter and antenna are on a hill on one edge of town at the Austine School for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing. With enrollments falling since the recession started in 2007, the school found itself in trouble and cancelled the 2014 - 2015 academic year. A short time later they went bankrupt. The bank is currently managing the property.
Our signal gets from our studio to the campus via the internet. One day, without any warning, the internet company that provided DSL to the campus decided to shut down the school's service over unpaid bills. And we were off the air. It took a day to figure out what had happened. I had to go through two lawyers just to find out with which bank I needed to negotiate. Then it turned out that the bank was unaware of our close to 8 year presence on the campus. So our lease had to be produced. Then came negotiating with the internet company that provides service to our studio, which was the same company Austine used. They wouldn't turn the account back on due to the bankruptcy, the involvement of State funds, and etc. but they would open a new account up there for us. Of course, it would involve wiring by the phone company, which is on strike. The estimate to complete the job was over two months. If we were lucky. Finally we opened a business account with the local cable provider, which they installed in a little over one days' time. There were a number of further complications, of course. But we got back on the air.
It's taken me until today to get this week's radio show posted. I really should start a blog just for the show, but I've no idea where I would find the time. So here's the end of the year broadcast, beset by problems in production (my computer acted out) as well as with the internet delivery from our studio to our transmitter (old wiring installed at the school years ago failed - that's been fixed, too).
Sigh.
With Best Wishes for a Happy New Year to All.
