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History of the Marconi Experiment

I've been doing the show as an internet station which gets updated weekly now since 2008 and it has worked out extremely well.  I never get cancelled, I never get pre-empted by football or soccer or any other event and I can say and play anything that I want.  There might still be a few "radio" versions in my library, but the intent is to have nothing edited.  I'm not entirely sure of the value of being able to say "fuck", but it's nice to not have to worry about it turning up in a song.  If you've become a regular listener, you know that the vast majority of the time, I still do the same format as I did on the radio except that I don't have to read news and there's no reason to do time, weather or station identification.  If you're listening, you had to explicitly seek me out and you know exactly what you're listening to.  I still record on Friday night, roughly in the same time slot as I used to do on the air.  I could do it any time and I don't really need to do it all at once, but, with only two or three exceptions in 4 years, I do it "live".  I also have the option of editing and doing retakes.  The only thing I regularly edit out is silences.  Occasionally, I allow myself to get into the music too much and are not ready when the last song ends.  Those are the silences that I edit out.  I have also edited myself once or twice for time.  The service I use insists that no segment exceed 30 minutes.  They enforce this by not using anything that exceeds that limit, so I measure carefully.  The recording program shows the time, so it's easy to keep track, but if the music runs over by a small enough time that I can get it under the limit by editing myself, I will do that.  I do not edit for content. so if I sound like an idiot at times, remember, I could have fixed that, but didn't.  The show ran a tightly controlled 4 1/2 hours on WCVH, and that was inflexible.  For the same reason that I record on Friday night (habit), I do between 4 and 4 1/2 hours.  Once in a while, I don't have the time to record a show and I just put together an all music show with individual tracks.  I can control the order in which they get played, but I have no say over where they insert breaks.  With upload time, I can probably do a 4 hour show in under 2 hours.  Under 1 hour, if I pick randomly, but I really have to be pressured to do that.  With prep, flile conversion, tagging and upload, a 4 hour show takes around 6 1/2 hours.

The Marconi Experiment on WCVH, October 1975 - June 2008.  The show will live on, but not on WCVH.  I'm looking for another on-air gig, but that's damned unlikely.  Stay tuned for our internet debut.

As far as I know, the evening shows on WCVH-FM were all originally called the Marconi Experiment.  I started on Saturday nights for a short time, until the evening slot on Fridays opened up.  I have been doing Fridays ever since.  I'm fairly sure I started doing my weekly show back in 1975, after taking a radio course at Hunterdon Central (facts are accurate, date may not be.)  At that time, we broadcast in monaural from a tower a short distance outside the center of Flemington, NJ. and I ran from 8:00 PM until signoff, scheduled for 11:00, but then, as now, the end time was somewhat flexible (now I typically run over by 5 to 15 minutes, then it could run into hours).  I operated alone and I admit I was settling into a comfortable musical rut.  I might still be in it except for a student operator that joined the show.  All right, I didn't really have a choice, but I have been thankful that it happened.  His musical tastes were about as far from mine as mine were from my parents.  I was exposed to music I probably wouldn't have listened to for a minute.  It started to occasionally sound interesting.  He also brought another co-operator into the show, who was as different from either of us as I was from him.  They prevented me from being someone who would reject music just because it had the wrong label, or I disapproved of the artist's lifestyle.  There is a lot of music that I don't like, but I listen to it before I decide if I like it or not.  Early on, an oldies show was added to the end of Friday's schedule.  This forced me to operate in a fixed time period.  I never liked it, but at least I proved to myself that I could restrain myself.  My co-hosts graduated or otherwise left, and again I was on my own, while the oldies show went elsewhere, so I was free to operate as late as I liked again.  A storm blew down the tower we were using,  and for a short time, our antenna was actually in a tree!  The tower owner decided to not rebuild, and we finally moved to the county communication center in Cherryville.  We soon upgraded to stereo.  We also moved the studio a few times while I have been doing the show.  Over the years, programming has been reduced, so we operate on weekdays only and summer operation is limited.  In general, if the school is closed, the station does not operate, so if a holiday falls on a Friday, there is no show that week.  The security has also been tightened, so the days of operating long past the scheduled sign-off are gone.  As a result of changes made, I now do only about 30 shows a year, instead of the 50 to 52 a year I used to do, and I never run more than 15 minutes over the scheduled sign-off.

Well, it seems that I really need that promo now.  This summer (end of August, so I've been told), they put in a new programming system and programmed it to deliver a country music format.  Nobody warned me.  The Marconi Experiment is considered a "specialty" show and will not be required to adhere to the format, but don't think I don't feel some pressure to alter my normally free-flowing format to, at least slightly, ease the current audience into what I do.  I expect that virtually no one who listens to the country format will tune into me intentionally and that means I need to get the word out that Friday from 5:30 until 10 is different.  I also need to reassure long-time listeners that things are not going to change, at least on Friday night.
    We are planning to add Arbitron (or actually, I believe we're arranging Arbitron to add us).  This means that, for the first time ever, we will have some idea how many listeners we have.  Given the minimal competition we have with our country format, I expect that our ratings will be extraordinarily high for a station of our size.  At least, that's what I expect most of the time.  Friday from 5:30 until 10:00PM, I expect to see that number go toward zero, since rock in general has a lot more competition and my approach to it will only appeal to a select few.  I don't intend to change.

    I've now spent most of a season co-existing with the country format and everyone seems to have become comfortable.  I have to admit that I'm holding back a bit, since I'm sure that the country audience would be happier with me gone and I can't give them any leverage.  I've also made some format changes myself.  I've largely stopped doing news, mostly for two reasons:  one, I don't think it really fits into what I do, and two, I'm not all that good at it.  I read the weather a few times in a night because that's something I think my audience can use.  I do check the news and will pull out any stories that need commentary.
    Another change is that the automated system used to be left running all the time and I just took it off the air while I was on.  The new system actually pauses while I'm on and is programmed to the clock, so running over is no longer an option.  I have to run a lot more like a real radio station and finish within a minute or so of 10:00.  I also have a lot less flexibility as to when I start.  I used to override the system once in a while and go on early.  I never started the Marconi Experiment early, but I occasionally did my own thing, music-wise between 5:00 and 5:30.  I could still do that, but it's a lot more complicated now.


    It looks like they may be reevaluating "specialty" shows, into which the Marconi Experiment falls.  This may just be a temporary setback.  At this point, all I can do is wait for a decision and consider what my alternatives might be.  Doing the show from home in the internet would be harder, technically, but a lot easier timewise.  One possible carrier looks way too restrictive.  If I take this on the internet, I don't want to have to tolerate the same restrictions that I have on radio.  There are great songs that I couldn't clean up enough to play on the air that I would like to see get played.  I never give up...  neither should you.