[TWIAR] TWIAR October Update

[kxkvi]

Well folks, here we are again. The fall season is well underway, and once
more the funding to support This Week in Amateur Radio has dropped to zero.
Zip. Nada.

I have to tell you, I have been doing a lot of thinking and deep soul
searching over the past few weeks regarding the future of This Week in
Amateur Radio.  And this, got me thinking about the past, and the great
hopes we had when we (myself and others here in Albany) took over this
little bulletin service from California.

Getting it off the ground was tough. We made a lot of presentations to the
local radio clubs here in New York's Capital District, and some of them
came through with the seed money we needed to get the service off the ground.
We arranged for satellite distribution, and we were off and running a weekly
national (international really) on the air bulletin service.

During the early analog production years of the service, it used to cost
several hundred dollars a month to keep us going. Analog production
costs for tape, long distance analog satellite uplinking, etc. And, we
were lucky to have some great affiliates out there support us.

Then internet and digital production came along, and we updated (at our own
expense) our production facilities from analog to digital, secured a domain
name and site host, and we're now on the net.  And now that we're almost
100% digital, our costs have dropped to around $100 a month. This for
web access, long distance telephone, equipment maintenence, and software
licensing and upgrades.

Funding for the service over the past year, has not been equal to the expenses
we incur to produce and distribute the bulletin service. I have paid for our
production costs out of pocket, and Greg Williams, K4HSM, our web guru, is
currently paying for our web site hosting and bandwidth out of pocket.

Why?

Isn't This Week in Amateur Radio worth it anymore? I wonder. We're covering
more news now than ever. We even include material produced at the ARRL. We
have more special segments than we used to. This Week used to be a thirty-
minute service. Now, we provide at least an hour a week.

What's wrong? Must be the economy.

This reminded me of the great apathy I find invading amateur radio.
Now, I don't know if this is true in your part of the planet, and I am
certainly not talking about amateur radios first responders. I keep hearing
that "amateur radio is a dying hobby". And, I have to tell you, here in the
Albany, New York area, I am begining to believe it.

Here is a few examples of what I am talking about.

This Week in Amateur Radio has been off the air here in Albany due to the
fact that the repeater that carries our service is down for repair and
replacement. We've been off now for a month. Has any club, or repeater
owner come forth to carry the news service until our primary machine comes
back on line? No.

When I go to local hamfests, I hear, "Oh, you produce that news thing that
eats up all that repeater time." Well, scan the two meter band here in
Albany any weekend evening. Out of the dozen or more repeaters in the area,
they're mostly silent.  The conversations that you do hear should be on
other services. Like the couples tracking each others where abouts and if
there is enough milk at home. And the other conversations are the same
material I thought I was getting away from when I left the 11 meter band.

News? Very few here in Albany care.

Thinking further, I thought about how important we all
originally thought This Week in Amateur Radio could be to the amateur
service. Our way of giving back. I thought, we have to be there each and
every Saturday evening at 9pm on the satellite and as soon as possible
on the web each weekend. I thought about the 548 Friday and Saturday
evenings I stayed in the shack cranking out the service over the years.
The countless hours on the web news gathering, the phone calls, lining
up talent, special segments, and more.

I thought about all the time and effort Greg puts into our web site, and
the news ticker.  Not to mention Dale's efforts in getting the final audio
file from me each week, and encoding it for web distro. Not to mention all
the effort our segment producers put in to help keep our content fresh and
unique each week.

We air our funding requests each week in hopes to keep This Week in Amateur
Radio running. And, everyday I run down to the post office to look in that
empty box.

Recently, (and thanks to Leo at TechTV) we found out about the click through
advertising system with Google and few other distributers. We just added the
Google ads, and will be adding more in the future. We did this in hopes that
it might generate a little bit of revenue.

So, with all this mind, what should we do with This Week in Amateur Radio?
We came to the following decision. Right now, we have funding for two more
weeks. After that the bank account is drained dry. So, it's at this point
I think I will leave things up to you our listeners and affiliates.

This Week in Amateur Radio may be ending production. I am currently in a
very bad financial situation and cannot fund the service out of pocket any
more. If you like our service, please help it continue. If nothing appears
in our mailbox sometime soon, This Week will be forced to shut down
operations by the end of the year.

It's that simple.

All of us here at the TWIAR headquarters studio would like to keep going and
keep giving NewsLine a run for their money. (Just kidding, we're all friends
with Bill P.)

We hope to hear from you all soon!

Best 73

W2XBS and the entire
Albany Staff of TWIAR