Monday, January 25, 2010

2PR FM Second Test Broadcast, A Blaring Success!


MOOD:  BLARRY EYED

Well, here it is, a steaming Monday morning around 11:00, and I guess recovering from perhaps one of the latest nights I've had in a while.  It was off to bed round 5:00 am this morning, after what has been a tremendously successful broadcast. 

Unofficially we fired off the transmitter (we wish), webcast at 7:15 Monday morning 28th December 2009 with Donna Summer's Hot Stuff.  From there it was making sure everything from our broadcast software, playlist automation, music selection, through to the audio stream was going fine.  Then from Midday Thursday 31st December the studio was alight, the retro was in full wind-back mode, and the microphone sizzling.  

Along the way we fired off an extensive test broadcast awareness campaign, with press releases off to several local rags, and Sydney's main spread-sheets.   A week later we received coverage from the St George Leader, with some paper journalists interviewing us from our premises.  The article you can read here.

http://www.webcitation.org/5uoidx6j8

Also at the same time, we were excited that the station became wikipediarised:

EDIT: Due to article deletion, 
this link has been revised to an archived sample of the article. 
http://www.webcitation.org/5uoidx6j8

They were also many new shows appearing during our second test.  This included Sunday Night 70s, which aired for the first time on the evening of Sunday 3rd January at 6:00 pm.  Unlike the average 70s shows you hear on commercial radio, this will allow me to air my entire back archive of all the 70s hits I have in my vast music collection.  At this stage, I've digitised just over 2,000 70s tracks, with another 1,500 on the way in the not too distant future.  Most excitingly though, we bought the New Year in with the debut of our all new party show retropartymix.com.  Sending out the party vibe, the program is dedicated to playing original extended 12 inch mixes from the 70s 80s and 90s. 

There was a small hiccup with the newspaper getting our end of broadcast date wrong, but considering what a brilliant test this has been, nothing to get hung about.

As we sign off, I'm glad to say on a personal note that it also has been a rewarding experience.  Due to my asperger's syndrome, the Christmas / New Year period is often a struggle, but the events of the second test have kept these struggles a good distance from my mind.  The summer of 2009 to 2010 will be remembered as a good one.

I hope to get the next test up by late April; this all depends on how my digitising project is going.  I'm still working through my entire CD and record library, which is definitely one of the biggest tasks I've taken on in my life.  One thing that is for certain, every test that we do, the playlist will grow much bigger with many more selections in the mix.