Wow.
With last Sunday’s announcement and then the Transmitter we sent out last Friday morning, we’ve received nearly two dozen emails from friends, family and mostly loyal listeners. If we haven’t got back to you yet - we will. But please know that we sincerely appreciate all the positive vibes and well wishes. Most of you are sad to see us go and we are very sad to leave. Some of you have asked if there is anything that can be done to turn the tide - to keep 80s Airwaves on the air. Ultimately, the part we love is the music - if there were someone or some company interested in marketing our station, optimizing our search rankings and handling sponsors so that we could just focus on the station, we would probably stay with it. But we cannot seriously expect a company/persons to do this without payment of some type and with our declining ratings, sponsorships seem unlikely anyway. Well - declining ratings until last Monday, at which point we witnessed one day increase over the next, over the next right through to Friday. It just figures, doesn’t it? Regardless, I would reiterate that we are 95% certain that our final broadcast day will be Friday, Oct. 21 and we’ve also selected our final song but will not reveal it until that night - midnight. Thanks for all the input and even to those of you who emailed us songs! But once again, you have our most sincere appreciation for responding so overwhelmingly and so positively to our situation. It really means a lot to both of us.
Speaking of saying goodbye - the very talented Martin Hennessy will be sponsoring a virtual going away party for us. He’s asking the readers of his 80s Nuts Newsletter to send us goodbye photos. Looks like Aimee and I will be picking the best… somehow, but we will be creating a collage of the photos received and posting it our site - maybe even creating a special “goodbye” edition of the Transmitter. Martin has some nice things for the winner and we will be contributing to the winner’s stash as well!
We have a contest this week too: As you know every two hours we play new releases and part of our current new releases rotation includes new music from former Cars frontman Ric Ocasek. Next time you hear a new song from Ric Ocasek email us with “Ric, Ric, Ric” in the subject and your mailing address in the body. Mail it to feedback @ 80sAirwaves . com. The first one to do so wins Ric’s new disc, Nexterday! We have THREE copies to give away this week so keep listening!
Last night I went and visited our Cafe Press shop to see about shutting it down. Found out that beyond the shirt we sent to David Lowery back in November of last year, we haven’t sold ONE shirt since. So I’ve reduce all the prices to their minimum - we haven’t made any money on this station yet, so why try now? This will be your last chance to own an 80s Airwaves t-shirt (we’ve got both kinds; mens and womens), mousepad or stickers. These are even better than the original jerseys I had printed because they have the “Broadcasting Live from a Bonus Room Over the Garage” slogan on the back. Visit the site now by clicking “Wearables” in our menu or just click on this to check it out. We’ll shut this down at the end of the month.
One idea I have, for after the station goes dark, is for a quarterly DVD-Rom music zine, that loads within your web-browser. The disc and packaging would be a limited edition affair and once all were sold out or sent out, I would BitTorrent the entire disc image. It would contain MANY mp3’s, quick time movies/music vids/trailers, media reviews, links, photos, PDFs and more. We can do a lot with 4.4GB and a browser! I’m currently really digging magazines like Paste, Stop Smiling, Skyscraper, McSweeneys and a few others. If you’re a fan of those as well, you would probably like what I’ve got conjured up in my head. Anyone know how to screen print? I really like the idea of not being musically tied to a time frame - like the 80’s - but somehow it will likely still have our 80s Airwaves multi-media feel. There are a lot of great NEW artists out there who deserve your attention. If this sounds like something of interest, either as a contributor or reader, drop us an email with your mailing address - we’ll create a separate database for this other project since it will be mailed. Of course, Aimee and I also have an idea/plan for a haunted movie theater that only shows horror movies (new and old) year round… so we’ll see which idea pans out first! =D
Have a great week.
-pjc