Flip, Flop

In the world of radio broadcasting a format flip is when a radio station takes most or all of its music or programming and exchanges for another type of music and/or programming. Programmers do this with the hope that the new format will bring in new advertisers, that is: income or revenue to the station. Trust me, your favorite radio station is not trying to tick you off by eliminating your favorite type of music.

Not surprisingly, in fact, money is the name of the game. My first dozen years in radio were frustrating. I worked for quite a few stations—5,000 watts or less—that played Southern Gospel music. For the most part they relied on income generated from preachers and ministries that bought time. Usually, air time was purchased in blocks of 15 minutes to an hour by mainly local, read amateur, preachers. Some local businesses bought 30 and 60 second spots, but preaching shows were our bread and butter. The source of my frustration was that the stations sounded less than professional because of our association with these brokered time shows. What happens when the economy dips into recession and these ministries are equally affected? Do you pursue local business? As a business man am I to believe that I can sell my product on an inferior station? Perception being reality, the answer is: NO.

I have written about the 2,500 watt WBKI in Bremen, Georgia that was my home from 1992 to 1993. A highly qualified broadcaster, call him David, hired me to work with him at WBKI. I had worked with David at two other stations and saw WBKI as a good opportunity. He had arranged an agreement with the owner to run the small station. The owner would remain out of the picture. David intended to take over operations as he considered purchasing the property outright. It was a “try before you buy” scenario. He hired me and another friend to Dee Jay. We worked together fine, but our efforts were futile in the end. We were a flop. David dropped out and allowed the Garner family to buy the station. I quit, but our other friend stayed on with the new owners. I intend to interview my old associate in a future podcast.

Now 17 years later the renamed WGMI is flipping from a Christian format to sports and oldies—gospel music occasionally, Sundays mainly. The recession crunches us all. But my hat is off to the Garners, who hung in there for so long. See http://www.wgmiradio.com for details.

Stay tuned

©2010 Neal Rhoden. Gospel Aircheck. All rights reserved.

Freebies

Back again on the Internet beat Gospel Aircheck has returned with some great free forever software and services many of you can use.

One of our faves is Picasa™ from Google. For electronic photo sharing and storage and—did we mention?—it is free. Google offers a full gigabyte of storage of your priceless pics. Instead of the photo software native to our computers the Whistle has opted for Picasa. Check it out at http://www.google.com/picasa

For photo editing try Paint Dot Net; a surprisingly comprehensive and feature laden image editing software 100% no charge forever. Many of the things you can do in Photoshop™ are done just as well with Paint Dot Net. Follow the link above or: http://www.getpaint.net

Finally, Gospel Aircheck has found a wonderful file storage site that is totally free; we now use it for all our audio storage. The sound clip elements on this and our sister blog, The Peanut Whistle plus the Gospel Rewind Podcasts are handled by DivShare. You get 10 Gigs of storage and 5 Gigs of downloads. They offer more storage for a fee, but we highly recommend the free starter package. So far, so good; they promise storage is forever. Recently that offer seemed very attractive due to a failure with another so called free storage site that erased all our sound files because their 90 day inactivity policy. Do not use File Factory get DivShare.

Stay tuned

 

©2010 Neal Rhoden, Gospel Aircheck. All rights reserved

Hallelujah Meeting!

What a week it was for the Rhoden family. We lost a dear member, my aunt Sylvia. She was laid to rest yesterday in Marion County, Georgia; but, her legacy lives on in song. Today I am rerunning a Gospel Rewind podcast from last year that featured Sylvia's awesome singing. The first song You're Still Lord by Lanny Wolfe and Phil Johnson then a duet with her long time collaborator, Rev. Jerry Rice; the song: How Much more written by Rusty Goodman. The last song is sung by her big brother, my late dad, James Rhoden Now I have Everything. I know my dad and his baby sister Sylvia are teaching the angels how to sing. Please allow time for the podcast to load.

©2010 Gospel Aircheck. All rights reserved.

Let's Rewind

Now a blast from the past. Presented here today is a classic episode of Gospel Rewind featuring two timeless songs. Some of the contact info has changed. Reach me through email nealrhoden@gospelaircheck.com


©2010 The Peanut Whistle. All rights reserved.

Rocktober

Back in October of 1986 at my radio home number one a certain CCM label, I think Sparrow records, sent the station a promotional poster renaming the month "Rocktober". The following unscoped aircheck is my afternoon contemporary Christian music show. It is a stereo rebuild of the original mono recording. Enjoy.

©2010 The Peanut Whistle. All rights reserved.

The New Medium

  A new buzzword is sweeping the radio industry; That is, “New Media.” The term refers to podcasting, web shows, Internet audio and video streaming and such. It is my goal to make at least a dent in the new media pie with my show “Gospel Rewind” For now, the radio station I started last March is on the back burner. The instant, on demand, availability of my shows is very exciting as I introduce an original American art form to a new generation. Gospel music is root to most all genres of current popular music.

  I made a living playing such songs on various traditional AM & FM radio stations over a 12 year period from the early ‘80’s though about ‘95. Music appreciation has been a focus of most of my years since; gravitating to the religious form, mostly. I have noticed living among the Conservative Christian community that secular music is gaining more acceptance with reports of “Christian” stations tweaking their formats to “positive” music allowing the more innocuous mainstream hits airplay. I’m afraid we’ve crossed a dangerous line by mixing secular with sacred. It could spell the end of Contemporary Christian Music as we know it.

  Gospel Rewind will not be watered down. My New Media venture has a much more narrow focus, for sure. We do not limit the show to any sub-genre: Southern, Black Gospel, CCM, Inspirational, Choir, Christian Country, you name it; I have covered it all and try to blend the styles. My most recent podcast Heaven’s Jam is a great example of what I want the show to represent. Give it a listen. You’ll hear gospel music crossing racial barriers in a way I have seldom heard.

  For those not privileged to the episode’s back story; my dad was a blind minister, a piano tuner by trade, who was white. I was his hired assistant and we had, by chance, brought along a Panasonic cassette boom box which we used to record a 14 year old phenom piano player at a small black church in Savannah, Georgia. Often we were treated to our customers’ playing a freshly tuned instrument with much skill, but this cat was off the charts. My dad compared him to Andraé Crouch; for which the young man seemed honored. His father, the pastor, also blind, joined the singing. What sweet music was captured that day. My dad summed up the jam session by saying that a vast majority of true talent is yet to be discovered. For the two of us our cassette document was proof.

 

Stay tuned

Heaven's Jam

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© 2010 The Peanut Whistle. All rights reserved.