Sometimes I feel as if I'm stuck in an ocean filled with millions of internet and commercial radio stations and the truth is, I am! With so many choices plus terrestrial radio at your doorstep, how can we stand out and make ourselves unique? The answer is not an easy one. First of all, the sound quality of our station must be great! That alone can be a daunting task. The format is also important. There is so much competition. Personally, I will not play music that I can't listen to myself. I can't program contemporary music because I just don't like it even though I know that lots of teeny boppers would listen. I sacrifice listeners for better quality programming in my opinion. I would rathe

When you're not an engineer, getting the sound right can be a maddening task! I added a new audio processor to Edgewater Gold Radio and was working on getting the sound just right. As audiophiles know there are many many settings and unless you know specifically how each setting affects your output sound, you will be literally working in the dark. Yesterday afternoon, I attempted to "play" with the settings without the help of someone who is very familiar with processors. There were times when the station sounded like a "Tin can" or the bass was set so high that you couldn't even understand the lyrics. I also did something that affected the voice tracks. They were so loud compared to the mus

The days of spending thousands of dollars on sound processing for radio stations are gone thanks to the advance of some great technology. Radio stations use automation software to run their programming. Some software contains it's own adjustable processing modules but there are many plugins that are very reasonably priced that can sound very close to that $5,000 optimod. You can get many of these plugin for under $100. The processing plugin for Edgewater Gold Radio cost me $39.99. If you're starting an internet radio station or even a LPFM, don't think so big and expensive. Do some research, you can save thousands and still have a great sounding station! Too many people think that they have

When I first started Edgewater Gold Radio, it began as a Part 15 station serving my condo community. Problem, nobody in my condo community listened, except one guy in 3L. The power allowed by the FCC without obtaining a license is extremely low. 1/10 of a watt for AM and about 1/40th of a watt for FM with lots of antenna restrictions. I lived in a heavily populated area with lots of buildings and concrete. This is no good for Part 15 broadcasting. My transmitter was on my terrace and the small antenna was only 15 feet off the ground. The result....awful. Barely a 1/4 mile signal. Unless you live in a flat area where you can have an effective ground system, if you are on AM my opinion is that

Most radio station owners and operators always strive for excellence. Sometimes we're perfectionists expecting everything to go perfectly all the time. In reality, this isn't the case. There is always something that we're trying to improve. Before automation, we had to deal with equipment failures. I remember working at a radio station where all of the music was on vinyl records. We had two turntables and in the middle of my show, one of the preamps on the turntable gave out. The result.....only one turntable. Can you imagine how difficult it was to run a music show that used only vinyl records using only one turntable?? Edgewater Gold Radio uses automation software and uses Live 365 as it's

One of the most frustrating things about Windows 10 is that it seems to have a mind of it's own. It pushes updates through every now and then and automatically shuts down your computer. I run Edgewater Gold Radio on a computer that uses Windows 10. I've checked off "No automatic updates" but this software seems ignore these commands. There aren't as many updates as there were when the software was first introduced. I do get a message indicating that there is a new update. It gives you the option to install it right away and restart your computer or pick a day and time to install it. This option never works for me. Usually I would choose to install the update in the evening or early morning

Dan Ingram was manning the microphone at 77 WABC radio in New York City back in 1965, when all of a sudden the power started going out of the music. The cart machines began to grind to a crawl . . . then the lights went out. They went out all over New York City. In fact the entire Northeast went dark from Maine to southern New Jersey. From Wikipedia: An aircheck of New York City radio station WABC from November 9, 1965 reveals disc jockey Dan Ingram doing a segment of his afternoon drive time show, during which he notes that a record he’s playing (Jonathan King’s “Everyone’s Gone to the Moon”) sounds slow, as do the subsequent jingles played during a commercial break. Ingram quipped that the

If you are running commercials on your radio station, a big question could be how should I schedule them? In the 60s and 70s commercials were run frequently in between songs. WABC in New York City would play a song, talk run a commercial or two play another song or two and then another commercial. It didn't seem to affect the audience since at the time WABC held 25% of the entire radio audience in the New York metropolitan area. Today's trend is very annoying in my opinion. Many stations schedule commercials near the top of the hour BUT then will play ten in a row!! I can't see how this isn't an audience turn off! Edgewater Gold Radio has to run national commercials. I would rather run the

If you.re a radio programmer, one of the things that can gradually ruin you is complacency. As programmers, we are always tweeking our formats even if what we're doing is working well. If you're programming a music station, you should be changing the rotation periodically, adding additional songs, retiring some songs and adding some new features to your program from time to time. Tweeking is not the same a "changing." For instance as an oldies station, I recently, took out the Summer imaging, added some music to the library and altered the rotation a bit to keep the day time more up tempo. I didn't make any changes that would affect our oldies format. Be careful when tweeking. Monitor the re

Terrestrial radio is vulnerable to severe weather. I can't tell you how many times while I was on the air and a thunderstorm or ice storm hit knocking the station off the air. We were plunged into darkness in an instant. Most of the time we were off the air for hours, days sometimes. A couple of stations had backup transmitters. I had to make my way with a flashlight to the transmitter room and attempt to fire up the auxiliary transmitter which ran off a generator. This could be a daunting task! Even though Hurricane Florence didn't affect southern Delaware the way that it did the Carolina's, Edgewater Gold Radio had signal problems. On Friday as the hurricane was making landfall, our strea

People turn to radio during times of emergency such as Hurricane Florence. There will be over a million power outages cutting off communication for millions in the area. During this time, we turn to radio as a source for information. When Hurricane Sandy hit in 2012, I was living in Edgewater, New Jersey. Edgewater sits directly across from Manhattan on the Hudson River. We experienced hurricane force winds and severe flooding as the Hudson River overflowed it's banks and flooded out town. I sat and watched power transformers explode across the area. We lost power for over a week! During this very trying time, I relied on our local news station from New York (1010 WINS) for all information r

Hurricane Florence is approaching the North Carolina coast about 60% evacuated but those who stayed behind have to find a way to ride out this dangerous storm. Edgewater Gold Radio is providing information twice an hour today on Hurricane Florence. The National Hurricane Center has put together a comprehensive list of things to do to protect yourself. For years we’ve heard “Have a kit, have a plan,” but what kind of kit? Are kits really useful? And what kind of plan? What are the considerations? What should I actually DO in a hurricane? As a short answer to that last question, we put together a quick list of things you should do if a hurricane is headed your way. Keep in mind though tha

Edgewater Gold Radio uses Nextkast Software to run our programming. The software developer has introduced a free mobile app for internet radio broadcasters. Here's a post from Winston Potgieter explaining how to acquire this app. More great things are coming for Internet radio! We Would Like to Give your Internet Station a Free Mobile app (some strings attached ...) We love small internet radio broadcasters and want to move the inter net radio platform to the general public. We have created http://www.myradiotuner.com an Exclusive internet radio directory that takes a very simple and unique approach to the internet Radio Directory, have a look at the site. To get more people to use the pla

Local stations especially LPFM's should be a real asset to the community. They should provide a community with local information that won't be heard anywhere else. A major hurricane is expected to barrel into the east coast later this week. If LPFM's were really doing the job that their license was assigned for, they would be preparing the local public for any affects that the storm may bring. They would be in constant communication with local officials and delivering accurate information regarding emergency plans and hurricane or tropical storm preparedness. Local stations and LPFM's can really zero in on issues directly affecting the public. This is one of the main purposes of a local rad

There are many views on whether or not you should include weather forecasts for an internet radio station. Most people feel that since you're broadcasting to the world, a weather forecast will be not be relevant. This is true if you're are not catering to any local audience. If you're a station that has a concentration on a local area then, I feel that it's ok to include weather. Make sure it's short and doesn't disrupt the main program content. You can also include a general forecast for various parts of the country. At Edgewater Gold Radio, we focus on being local to the Delaware beaches. We include weather forecasts from 8am til 5pm weekdays. We also include lots of brief local informatio

While growing up, we listened to music on the radio, or on vinyl records and later tapes or CD's. Turning the radio on is an instant, thoughtless process. Turn in on, select the station and out comes the audio. That's it! While internet radio is making it's mark as an alternative to traditional radio, there is one main problem.....accessibility! We can easily access thousands of internet radio station but still not as easily as we can access traditional radio. To access internet radio, we have to either, go to a stations website. scroll around, find the "listen" button on click on it. We can also use an app such as Tunein. This requires finding the app, downloading it, searching among thous

I've been broadcasting and following trends on the internet for over 16 years. Internet radio give us the ability to track audience listening trends better than terrestrial radio. My findings are that internet radio listening during the Summer drop during the months of June, July and August. Why? you may ask. The answer is quite obvious. Since many people listen to the radio while at work, many of those people take vacations during this time dropping the radio listening audience quite a bit during this time. This is the trend for US base stations. Usually the audience takes a slow climb after Labor day as everyone is back at work, the kids are back at school and everything returns to a more

A very great broadcaster on a very great station in New York City, Harry Harrison once said to me as a very young man,"If you have the desire to get into the radio business, you will, no matter what." Let me digress for a bit, I came from a family that discouraged rather than encouraged. I was told "you can't" rather than "you can." As a child and as an adult, my self confidence level was always on the low end of the scale. My passion for radio began when I was in Elementary School. I was bullied and had trouble making friends. In the Summer, my mother wanted the kids out of the house because she felt that they shouldn't be cooped up inside. So I went outside. I didn't have many friends so