6 RPH - 990 on the AM dial

"What's this about a radio show? Do you have a radio show?" Gee whiz, if I'm getting this from my mother, that pretty much means no one else knows, either. So let me tell you what keeps my brain working and me out of arrestable trouble.

I volunteered for years in Columbus (and for one summer in Claremont, California ages ago) at the Radio Reading Service for the Blind. These services, found all over the world, make print publications accessible to the blind & print handicapped by having them read on a dedicated radio channel. However funded, they rely heavily on volunteers to get the reading done. Occasionally, there are shows that are more than dry recitations of articles from the daily papers, magazines like TV Guide, Time and Playboy (just the articles) which will have guests, call-ins from listeners or a rogue host incapable of walking the charter's straight & narrow. (nolo contendere)

By chance, I heard about the local service within a week of my arrival in OZ and signed up for training. I have to admit that I was rather dismayed to see how rigid the guidelines for readers were and to the apparent extremes volunteers took those. Well, it wasn't too many more months longer when I had my own show, "What's On Where"-- your radio guide to what is happening in and around Perth that is fun and affordable. At first, I would read event announcements from whatever freebie publications I could get my hands on. It sounded mechanical and geocentric to where I lived. Nuts. This show needed diversity in its offerings, a wider geographic outreach, a more efficient collection of material and a free rein at the mike.

Enter Cowgirl Hilary.

I insisted that WOW needed its own station-based email, printed up business cards (on their color printer) and then started spreading the word like manure. I wanted to grow a huge database of sources who would email/snail mail their events to me--rather than me chasing them down or spending countless hours on 582 websites every week. I started electronically managing the info sent as well. And loosened up the delivery on-air. Eventually, I further engaged the listener and venues by offering on-air promotions (read: freebie tickets given away in contests.) Because the concept is new for the show/station, not all tickets get picked up but that's OK because that way I get to go places myself.

Like most other radio reading services, this one is run on volunteer power-so, no I don't get paid for this. But, unlike Voicecorps in Columbus, which requires a special receiver (or is retransmitted in the hospitals or on cable TVs program channel audio) Information Radio is on the AM dial. Anyone and Everyone who has a radio can listen to my show. My on-air delivery is not perfect yet, but I am firmly in the saddle. Yeeee haaaa.