 This particular topic and program of Abledon On Air is partnered with Yankee Kingdom Media and WYKR. Coming up on this edition of Abledon On Air, we focus on radio communications and people with special needs. Plus, we talk to Joshua Smith, a man that came from the port to the radio broadcast booth. All that and much more when Abledon On Air starts right now. Welcome to this edition of Abledon On Air, the one and only program that focuses on the needs, concerns and achievements of the differently abled. I'm your host, Lauren Seiler. On this edition, we focus on radio communications and people with special needs. Let's welcome Joshua Smith, CEO of Yankee Kingdom Media and WYKR. Welcome, Josh, again to Abledon On Air. Yeah, it's great to be here again, Lauren. It's fantastic to see you again. Okay, fantastic to see you again throughout the whole pandemic. We're here. Talk about the history of WYKR and why you decided to go into radio communication. Yeah, so for about eight years or so, as many of your viewers know, I was the executive director over at Greenmount Support Services, which is an incredible organization. And one of the aspects of it is that we were doing a lot of public service and advertising with local radio stations. One of them being my hometown radio station where I'm from, which is WYKR, which has been around since almost 50 years. And one of the aspects of it is that the owner, the family of Puffer Broadcasting that's been part of it, the other ones that created it back in 1976, were looking to sell. And so they add some people that were looking at out of state conglomerates and people that wanted to come in and buy it, but they're very excited for the fact they're able to have somebody who is local to the area, who was able to carry on the mission and legacy of what a local radio station does. And so with my experience as well working in the disability field for well over a decade, the ability to take on the role of doing some level of adjusting my passion for public service in a way to be able to do that on a different platform was really a big pull for me. And as we've mentioned before off the air, I've had a long history of working in broadcasting as well through internet radio for almost half a decade so far. So it was a really good fit for me and the ability to kind of continue along with my mission and values and being able to do it in a different platform was good for me. Now let's talk about the history of radio for people who don't know and then go into, first of all, radio is not bad. What is the difference before we get to the history? What's the difference between internet radio? Because people with special needs are interested in the Korean radio. What's the difference between internet radio and a regular radio station? Right, that's a good question. And one to bring up the point that you said radio is not dead. As a matter of fact, radio as of this year celebrating its 100th anniversary as of 2023, radio broadcasting has been around for over 100 years now. And also too, just for your listeners and viewers to understand too, is that what makes local radio so powerful is that it's the only medium you can't pause, you can't fast forward. What do you mean by that? Well local television, if you're on through cable access, you can actually pause live television and go out and get a cup of coffee or come back and then unpause local television. And you can record it on a DVR. Right, exactly. That's the thing about local radio. Local radio, unless you actually record local radio as it goes, there's no aspect to do that. So what makes local radio powerful is that it is the only medium that you are 100% engaged in while you're listening. You can't, as they say so, for those that are looking at, for any nonprofits out there or for any businesses out there, local radio specifically is one of the best places to do advertising. And with that said, as you talk about with the issues with the difference between internet radio and local radio, local radio as we call terrestrial radio, radio that have AM frequencies or FM frequencies fall under the FCC communications. You have to get a license from the FCC in order to run. So let's talk about that for a minute. We've been talking about, okay, so you have to get a license, you know, if you want to own a station, but internet radio, you don't. You don't. It is still, so internet radio does not fall under the FCC guidelines yet. So which means is that you can be a little bit more free with what you want to do. But there's very specific rules and regulations if you're running an FCC, if you have an FCC license. One of them is that you have to make sure that anybody, specifically we're now in 2024, it's a political season, which means that radio stations have to oblige by letting federally people that are running for federal office to advertise on your radio station. And you have to give them the lowest price point that you've given somebody else because you can't show favorites. You can't have one party charge them more than another political party. You have to charge everybody the same amount. And the other thing that you have to do with an FCC license, which we talked about off the air about the public service announcements, you are obligated, if you have an FCC license, to actually perform X amount of hours a year to X amount of hours a year or a quarter a month to provide some public service announcements. Like what? What type of? Anything it could be from? A segment, a show. Commercials, it could be talking about the National Guard. It could be talking about cancer awareness. It could be about talking about people with disabilities. Talking about what people would like, just doing any advocacy work with people that are living with a disability. So there's a lot of things that are part of that guidelines that you're able to do. And you bring up the point, too, is what makes the beautiful thing about where we are now with our technology is that people living with any levels of disabilities, the accessibility factor is so much better now than it was before. So you think about folks now with the technology that might have hearing issues. Now there's a lot of places so that you have YouTube videos and other media that are able to create auto-generated captioning. So people that have hearing issues are able to be a part of a conversation by seeing that happen. I'm talking about people that radio has always been a huge advocate for the blind because the fact is that it's an auditory platform. It's a platform that's able to do that. But then you get into the question about how do you access radio for people that are hard of hearing. And that's where it comes down to that I really advocate and educate people that Facebook and social media should never be considered a competition to radio or television. Radio and television should be using social media as a tool to help promote the brand that a radio... Why is that? Well, there's a few things. You think about a garden. So say for instance that say you're an apple orchard. So you're primarily growing apples. That's your job because it's called an apple orchard. We're called the radio stations. We primarily work with radio. But the point in order for you to diversify your income streams through different mediums is going to where your listeners are. If your listeners are on the radio, you've got to make sure you're on the radio. If your listeners are in the car or waiting in a doctor's office and they can't listen to the radio at that moment, then being able to make sure that you provide complementary resources and information through your website or through a Facebook feed or through Instagram or some of those other points as well. And that's where it comes down to where we mentioned to when it comes to working in the... Being an advocate for people in the disability field is that it's really important that you cannot passively or unintentionally discriminate between people's access points. So with that said, we are very sure that we are as a radio station, we are an auditory platform. But it's extremely important for us to reach out to making sure that we provide some level of complementary videoship or some complementary ways for people to see what we're talking about as well. So let's talk about the history of radio. You said that radio is 100 years old. Years ago you had stories such as the Superman radio hour, even Idle of Lucy started as a radio and then went into TV. And then you had Dragnet and others, including the most infamous one, War of the Worlds. When we talk about news and war and things that are happening now, how has radio evolved? And you said radio is not dead, but past, present and future, how is it changing? So think about it from the perspective where you see, the thing that really brought local radio back a lot and just radio is podcasts. People are now able to... people are now able to listen to things on demand, listening to podcasts. There's literally right now hundreds of thousands of podcasts out there. It has democratized the medium for people to... It means that what I mean by that is that it's been able to allow anybody who has a microphone or even has a phone to make a podcast. So being able to create your own... be able to create your own library of information through that and being able to then send it out to the world for people to listen to. And that's one of the... Do podcasts cost money? Does it cost money to have one? It depends on the platform. So it depends if... So say, for instance, there's a few podcasting platforms that allow you to do it for free, but you're not in charge of the commercials. Which means they might put a commercial on there that might be different from what your own personal values are. If you want to pay for something, then... You can pay for something, then you're in charge of everything about it. Think about some people will have a Spotify subscription. If you have a Spotify subscription and listen to your own music on demand, you can play any music you want to. But you can also listen to Spotify for free. But when you do, you're going to have commercials pop up every 30 minutes, which is going to interrupt you. And it might be a commercial you're not interested in. So if you're hosting, if you go on and decide to have your own podcast and you want to do it for free, you're going to end up having advertising on there that you're not in control of. And it might be something that is not something that you purely believe in, whatever. So you could be a vegetarian, you could have a vegetarian podcast. And all of a sudden there's going to be a commercial for Oscar Meyer Wieners on your... Oh, I forget his name, but there was a gentleman that was on radio for years, author of someone that did a cooking show on radio. And that was kind of... There's several cooking shows on radio. I mean, that's kind of hard because you don't see the food, they talk about it. Right. And so the benefit of podcasts is that it's easy for people to make their own podcasts. The hard part about podcasts is that there is, as I said, there's hundreds and thousands of podcasts out there. The challenge of increasing your listenership is only through other people who listen to podcasts. Because if people that don't listen to podcasts aren't going to jump on podcasts. So the benefit of radio is everybody, everybody knows what a radio station, everybody knows what radio is. So the ability to get listeners to come on and be a part of that is way easier than it is to do podcasting. But the podcasting has a much shorter doorway for people to walk... A much easier doorway for people to walk into. What is... Now, I've researched. There are other countries that are doing radio and teaching radio for people with special needs. Berlin has a station, several. Then in Brazil there's a situation, it's called La Califata, and we've spoken about it on the show before. Where psychiatric patients or psychiatric residents in a hospital do a radio program as part of their recreation and job. What are your thoughts on that? I think it's great. And so this is the point when we're talking about podcasts and also internet radio. Also creating your own internet radio station is something that actually is not overly complicated to do. And this is the point that I highly recommend people that listen to the radio and are interested in starting their own shows. Whether they might be, as I say, they might be working in state government or working in nonprofits or doing anything. Any of your viewers and listeners out there, everybody that's listening and watching this, you yourself can actually create your own internet radio station. You can create your own podcast. And some people would say, well... What are some of the simple ways to do that? So people... Yeah, there is. There's absolute... And my first recommendation for anybody out there to do that is just get on... We're living in an age now where you can access any information you want to at a click of a button. And so I don't want to specifically direct anyone to a specific place. But I can tell you, all you have to do is get on the internet and do a search for how to create your own internet radio station or how to create your own podcast. Because some people that might be watching this might be saying, well, this is my thing. I might love gardening or I might have a disability advocate or whatever your thing is. And then the first thing you would say is you would get online and search and find that there is 100 different people doing the exact same thing you are. That doesn't matter. Because they're not doing it in your voice. You might say it in a way that will actually then finally reach somebody's ears. Because you might have a different story. Everybody has their own stories to tell. And being able to say it in a different way might be able to inspire someone to take some action. And so that's where it's extremely important is that no matter what everybody has... Everybody has a mark they want to put on there. Everybody has a story to tell. So with that said, another option as well is finding the... And if you do find some of those podcasts or find in some of those radio stations that you actually like a lot, here's the other thing that you can do. Instead of actually starting your own, reach out to that station and reach out to that podcast and say, hey, can I be a guest? Can I come on and be a guest? And if you have a story to tell, you'd be extremely surprised how easy it is to get on some of those podcasts and get on some of those shows to talk. Because as I say, everybody here, it's extremely important to stand behind the advocacy piece that you really should feel strongly about and get on there and start talking to people about your story. And then from there you could be inspired to start your own podcast or start your own show. And start your own radio station. That's something that is not a heavy lift. So say for instance, a group of just picking something like the Brain Injury Association or the Alzheimer's Association or a collection of companies that work with people with disability. Reach out to your colleagues and say, hey, let's start a radio station. It's not that hard. To do that, the accessibility of actually getting the equipment and being able to do that stuff, that is such a great way to actually increase your library of advocacy work. It also increases great ways to do fundraising, great ways to do a lot of that stuff. Okay. What are some of the misconceptions around, well, because you own a station. Is it a big risk jumping into a pool per se and owning a radio station for people that want to know? So starting an internet radio station, no. It's not a big risk at all because... But owning a terrestrial radio station, first of all, you just can't start a radio station where you actually have to see if there's a vacancy, a geographic vacancy to do that. So that's the other thing because there's also... And so the FCC only allows certain radio stations to be created. And I would say, too, is that you see a lot of radio stations that are starting to consolidate. That's why you're starting to see a lot of... If you see a lot of our local television stations around here are not locally owned anymore. They're owned by out-of-state conglomerates right now. They're all owned by Hearst Media. Great communication. One of the reasons they're owned by larger organizations is because it's extremely important that if you're looking at getting a radio station, first of all, you'd want to find one that's already in existing that you could purchase. And the other thing, too, is consistently looking towards the future of what is... What's going to happen in 10 years with local radio? What's going to happen in 15 years with local radio? So you have to be thinking consistently future-oriented on what that's going to look like. And as I say in the other piece, too, is making sure that you are... What makes you different than the other radio stations as well. And that's the other point that's going to be extremely important. And also, too, the beautiful part about this is that, as I was saying before... Starting an internet radio station is easier than having a regular radio station. Yes, correct. Because you can be... There's less overhead. There's less overhead. And also, the other benefit about internet radio is that it's, by default, anybody anywhere in the world can listen to you. So that's the other benefit of internet radio. So take me through a typical day. You're the station manager. What happens? Well, so I wake up at 5 o'clock in the morning to make sure that I get to the radio station by 6.30. There are some DJs that wake up at 3 a.m. Yeah, there are. And usually what it is is... So the four aspects of radio is engineering, knowing actually how the towers work and how all the computers and the control boards and all that stuff work. So the engineering piece, that has to be top of the mark. The other point, too, which is just that they're running on the business perspective. So the administrative aspects of that is also important. The other one is then is the programming and like in the on-air personality. So the actual programming of what's being played on the radio is important. And then the fourth part is sales because you can't run a radio station for free. So everything is based off of advertising. So those are the four aspects. Why are things based off of it? So advertising is a revenue stream, correct? Exactly. Yeah. Why is that? Well, because that's how you... Because that is the... Literally the only way a radio station makes money is through advertising. When you're working in the private sector, there's no grants or there's no... None of that stuff, those contracts are available. So that's why what you'll usually see a lot, too, is that there is... Any programming that you'll see on there is usually done through what they call a barter system where, like, for instance, we run... Say, for instance, that we would run the... Say, the old Farmer's Almanac, for instance, does a two-minute thing that they send you. And if you get it for free, then they expect you to run their commercials during that there. So that's kind of what you'd get. You get some barter situations, but you also think about it from the perspective of a newspaper. Newspapers have to sell their ads. That's how they get... If it's a free newspaper, if you're like, here, where we are right now, here in Montpil, you've got the world, you can go in there and pick up the world and it is free. You also have the bridge. And is the bridge free? So the reason why it's free is because they have advertising in there so that you're able to... So the advertising works... In seven days also. Yep. And the way that works is that they're able to put in their ads to pay for that newspaper for being free. That's the same thing as radio. Radio is free. You don't have to pay to listen to the local radio. But in order for the local radio to run, they have advertising in there to make sure they can keep the lights on. Okay, so what didn't we cover that's important for people to... So I truly believe that the point of radio and media itself is really important for people to realize that it's accessible to anyone. And if you feel like that it's not accessible, that's where it's really important to speak out and say, I want to hear this voice here or I can't access this. So that's one of the major points about that is that it's... The benefit of radio and the benefit of media in general is that it gives a new way for people to really talk about their advocacy and talk about their issues. And the point of radio is to educate, entertain and inform. And those are the three things that even with media is even what Lawrence, you do here is you educate, entertain and inform. And being able to make sure that as a station and as a company that own a media company that our job is to do those three things to as many people as possible. Well, I would like to thank you for joining us on this edition of Ableton on Air. Thank you very much for more information on WYKR and its programming. You can go to www.wykr.com and where can people turn for Yankee Kingdom Media? So as the parent company of WYKR is Yankee Kingdom Media. And we do have a website that's not up yet, but you can follow us on, follow WYKR on Facebook. You can follow us. Go to www.wykr.com and you can listen to us. No matter where you are in the world, you can actually listen to WYKR. WYKR and WTWM. WTWM is our AM channel, but it's all the same station right now. So you can go to www.wykr.com and here if you like country music, that's what we play. And we have a lot of other community related stuff there too. For more information on WYKR, you can go to www.wykr.com. That's www.wykr.com. And for more information on Ableton on Air and what you've seen today and other programs, you can go to www.orgamedia.net. That's www.orgamedia.net. And if you want to find out more information on our new blog post, you can go to blogspot www.blogger.com. The Ableton on Air newspaper blog www.blogger.com. This has been Ableton on Air. See you next time. You're listening to WYKR. This particular topic and program of Ableton on Air is partnered with Yankee Kingdom Media and WYKR. WYKR.