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Written by Ken Raisanen
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Saturday, 06 March 2010 23:20 |
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2012 - 2013 Broadcast Year August 11, 2012 - Let me see - what is new for the new broadcast year. . . I got to see Judy Collins in June (amazing!), got my fix of TREES at the Algomah Honey House as part of their 40th Anniversary tour last week and am heading to see the Lowrider Band (formerly called WAR) at the Calumet Theater tonight. Oh yes! I almost forgot - I am back in the saddle again! On Monday August 6, the Board of Education voted 5-2 to pull my pink-slip (over the strenuous objections of the superintendent I should add). There were 20 letters of support read at the meeting and over 40 people crowded the library as the board considered the lack of merit in a case the mediator said 'would be found in my favor by an arbitrator' for many reasons - starting with the dim view they take of pink-slipping the senior most teacher. I thank you all for your kind words and support. I am ready to put this behind me - let the healing and broadcasting begin! We start our shake-down broadcasting August 20 with 4 days of music by past and present Porcupine Mountain Music Festival artists. We will then be on and off until the first day of school (Tuesday after Labor Day). It will be another great year at WOAS-FM and (kiss of death statement to follow but we will try to not be pessimistic here) we certainly hope to have the web-streaming issues solved - finally!!! Check us out - watch this space for news and if you are interested in joining our crew of volunteers, there are many hours of broadcast time to fill! Enjoy the rest of summer - ker, GM DECEMBER 1, 2012 - UPDATE - The year has been 'interesting' so far - the bad - we condensed the school staff to the point where no one has time to breath! I have 6 preps / 207 students per day - 4 of the preps are things I have never taught before - the HS schedule is so tight, we have the smallest day staff in my history with the station (3 students) and our 'evening' staff has dropped to a similar number. Having been busier than a slinky on an escalator (yes, I did borrow that from an ad) so far, the station looks kind of like the set for one of those zombie movies - minus the undead. The good news - our only four year returnee Tom Croteau is our anchor. Tyler Moore the music man has been doing some contract work for REMC 1 and just may be inching us closer to the 'final web streaming solution' - after FOURTEEN YEARS of hit and miss, it will be so good to finally get things back on track in the streaming audio division. The next order of business will be to change this site template to one that actually lets us download pictures for your eyeballs to see! Oh yes - I got to visit the West Coast Bureau in November for some 'cat therapy' from grandcats Don Juan and Emma. Made a stop by at Amoeba Records in Hollywood with WCB music-head Todd, had lunch at the Newsroom with Lindsay Tomasic of Trees and WCB corespondent and editor Eliizabeth, and got to see the Shuttle Endeavor in its new home at the California Science Center right next to the LA Coliseum - what an impressive machine! All in all - after a summer of fighting 'the man' for my career (and indeed finding out how many people I had in my corner), it is great to be at work and will be even better next year when we transition from 'saving money' back to 'education'! Stay tuned - more to come! I had the opportunity to meet legendary Packer place kicker Chester Marcol on October 3, 2012 when we brought him to town to talk to our 6 - 12 students and to do a talk a book signing at the Ontonagon Township Library. I haven't meet that many celebs in my day, but if they are as humble and straight shooting as Chester is, then my hat is off to them all! Pick up his book ALIVE AND KICKING and he will show you both sides of the 'fame coin' - and tell you how he pulled himself up from about as low as a human being can go to being a productive, happy human again! Thanks for dropping by Chester - yes, that is him on the right (well, it would be if my program would behave and let me download his picture - another project for the new year! NEW YEAR'S UPDATE - JANUARY 1, 2013 - As December wound down, or old DJ and IT bud Tyler 'the Musicman' Moore has been in the house doing some contract IT work for the school. While it has been great to have him hanging around again (and on the air a bit), it has been even better that he has been helping us get our WEB STREAMING problem sorted out. He also update our STUDIO LOGGING computer with one of the used machines the district recently picked up. Atta-boy Tyler! We should pay you more (Moore?)! Our fall excitement was the lightning strike the school took early in the fall - it knocked out 1/3 of our radio board - the half covering the studio monitor system - we patched it up with every spare chip we had and in the end, Jim Bradley had to swap that panel out for a new one we purchased direct from Arakkis - our hard earned FUNDING FACTORY RECYCLING income put to good use! We had been streaming for the last year and a half, but issues with our carrier service at REMC 1 in Hancock have prevented us from putting the stream up outside the school network. Elizabeth and Todd in the West Coast Bureau tell me that 'yes, indeed' they have been able to access the stream. When we get back on the air on January 7, 2013 - I hope you will be able to, also! The next tech item will be updating the JOOMLA platform this site runs on - it has always had some bugs in it (like the inability to play nice and let us download photos, for example) - so we are hoping an upgrade to a more current version will also take care of that problem. So much music to share in the new year - we have MANY hour long music specials to share with our listeners - from Led Zeppelin to Rodriguez to Heart - we will be featuring them on Thursday Evenings starting in mid-January! ker - GM February 7, 2013 - Still working on getting the web page version of JOOMLA cleaned up- Tyler is off and working somewhere and we are back to snail's pace with getting things up. Sad to hear Doug M at REMC is banged up - making them more short staffed than normal- perhaps one day we will win the lotto, hire our own really high paid IT person and fix all of this . . .ah - what is a 'high paid IT person' anyway? Kind of like being a 'rich teacher' - ! ker - GM |
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Last Updated on Wednesday, 06 February 2013 22:48 |
