(Editor’s Note: Jonathan Mosen is the gentleman whose New Zealand-accented voice you hear on ACB Radio. Jonathan has been operating our Internet radio station — easily linked to from the ACB home page — since early December. In the letter below, posted to the ACB-radio list on March 17, Jonathan gave his listeners a preview of the exciting paths ACB-Radio was about to take. After these changes were made in early April, the most frequently heard comment about our global radio station was, “ACB Radio — Wow!”)
Hello everyone.
ACB Radio began broadcasting on December 1, 1999. In that time, we’ve brought you hundreds of hours of programming, including old time radio, technology discussion, debates on current issues in the blind community, and, of course, news about ACB. The success of ACB Radio has undisputedly proven the market for the blind community’s own radio station. Listenership has increased steadily, and already we are airing content from around the world.
Internet broadcasting is truly about to enter its golden age. The fidelity of audio over the Internet is improving all the time, and we are seeing listeners being freed from sitting in front of their computers just to hear Internet audio. A number of devices now exist that rebroadcast your computer’s audio on a standard FM radio, stand-alone Internet tuner appliances are now coming on the market, and the next generation of cellular phones will provide the necessary tools and bandwidth to allow us to listen to streaming audio anywhere.
ACB Radio is therefore pleased to announce a considerable expansion of its services, which we expect to come on stream sometime in April.
ACB Radio will be separating into three distinct content streams. ACB-Radio Treasure-Trove will broadcast an expanded collection of old-time radio content. A large amount of programming will be made available, and changed every two weeks. So if old-time radio happens to be your thing, there will be no interruptions, and we aim to be the best Internet old-time radio station out there!
The second stream, the ACB Radio Café, is something we’re really excited about. ACB Radio’s all-music channel will feature nothing but music from blind musicians. Of course the commercially recorded artists will be there, but we also want to play music by lesser-known artists, including those who have not been released commercially. We obviously expect the music to be good audio quality. The collection is being assembled now. If you would like to be included on this new music station, please contact me as soon as possible at support@acbradio.org. This music stream further develops our “by the blind, for the blind” concept and we are sure it will attract a lot of interest from outside the blind community too, so as well as entertaining an international audience, maybe you’ll be discovered!
The third stream, ACB-Radio Mainstream, will be entirely devoted to programs produced by or about blind people. Every day, two hours of new content, some of it live, some of it pre-recorded, will be made available on this channel. There will be an increase in live talk shows, such as a new technology show and a hard-hitting blindness issues program, reports from special events, and more.
Listeners will be informed about what’s going to be on, when, via a regular schedule published on the web site. The two hours of new material will be on live at the same time each day, then rotated thereafter until the next update of the live content.
Finally, we’re taking advantage of the Internet to put you in control. All your favorite blindness-related content will be made available on-demand. This means that you can listen to a show you want to hear, when you want to hear it.
In addition to providing links for RealPlayer 7 and Winamp for our streams, we’ll also be introducing an easy way for you to change ACB Radio channels. RealPlayer users will be able to switch between channels with a press of the page-up and page-down keys. Winamp users will be able to move between channels by using the B and Z keys.
We look forward to your continued support during this period of significant change and growth for ACB Radio. Thank you, our ACB Radio listeners, for making it all possible, and thanks to ACB for having the vision.
Sincerely,
Jonathan Mosen
jonathan@mosen.org