A personal appeal…

…this website/blog is looking for your personal support. Read on to the end to find out what you can do. It was conceived in January 2018 with a clip from the radio archives, and a first step towards using anthropological and sociological approaches to thinking about the radio. The idea is to write about how radio is listened to, and to consider the way in which it inspires others into creativity. An example is the feature published in December 2018 which listens to James Blake’s song Radio Silence as well as Alice Oseman’s book, Radio Silence.

The site has been a success in its first twelve months. Visitors from seventeen countries have read the articles. If you think of the national flag of each one, well that’s a lot of flags… And – of course – an excuse for this clip:

The majority of readers are in Britain, the USA and Canada. Europe is well represented, and Latin American countries include Brazil, Cuba, and Honduras. China, Israel, Australia, and India also take their place on the list of readers, viewers and followers.

This geographical information is provided by the web service which hosts this site, WordPress.com. It also lets me know that Wednesday at 21.00hrs GMT is the most popular time for people to read this material. I’m at somewhat of a loss to know what to do with this bit of statistical machine-generated information. Perhaps it’s due to the lack of a decent show on British TV at that time which drives readers here. Go on – see for yourself. I certainly refuse to believe it’s the effect of people tuning away from BBC Radio 2’s The Folk Show with Mark Radcliffe.

In 2018 over 1,300 users viewed the site, which is a steady one hundred per month. The favourite articles rank as follows:

1 Behind the Scenes

2 See Radio Differently

3 How to Do It

…although I’d encourage you to look through the archive to find more material to suit your own interest and tastes. The harsh statistics are that it costs just over one hundred UK pounds to run this site for twelve months. That is the annual web hosting fees payable to WordPress.com, and is a level of service which means that you – the reader – don’t have to see advertisements in the middle and top of every page, whilst at the same time enjoying a professionally laid-out website. As a result your correspondent is paying around UK£8.00 each time he uploads an article every month – plus labour costs representing around six hours writing/editing time. So, as a working journalist, I’m asking for your support. Please feel free to scroll down to the PayPal button at the very bottom of this page (and if you’re reading this on a mobile device of some description it’s a very long way down…) and please contribute what you feel you can in order to help this site develop. A continuing and regular contribution would be most welcome too. Please feel free to message me to discuss this.

And why not drop me a line to suggest things I should be talking about in the next twelve months? I look forward to hearing from you. How about more on old radio technology such as carts?

In the meantime, why not read some of my personal favourites: the one about killing cats, the articles about technological determinism, and my time with a major radio host out to lunch…

So, see you on Wednesday evening at nine…