March,
2th 2010 - Well... here it is, the inevitable. After almost
5 years on the air I have decided that it is time to say goodbye to Rotten Radio.
You may be asking yourself why I would want to stop doing the show and there
are numerous answers to that question and I'm not going to detail them all here.
I will however give a summary (for those that might care) of a few recent issues
that lead to the decision.
I guess the first thing that impacted the decision was Ryan's departure from
the show, not to any fault of his but with his real job and living 45 minutes
away from the studio, it just didn't work anymore and the dude was burning the
candle at both ends. It was a long time coming and the dude gave 100% and really
tried to make it to as many shows as he could towards the end and sometimes
even feel asleep in the studio. Ryan started to come in less and less until
it just got to the point that he couldn't show up anymore at all. As I said,
this is to no fault of his and I appreciate everything he has done for the show
and we are still good friends.
Another thing is that my own free time has become limited as well. I work at
WBLQ Monday through Friday as office manager and I also have two small children.
Doing a show like Rotten Radio is very time consuming, making radio edits takes
anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour PER SONG to do and thats just a small part
of the preparation that goes into a show. Some of that was relieved when the
show moved to a new day and time (to comply with the FCC's Safe Harbor rules)
and went uncensored in September. Things went pretty well for the month and
a half that it was on until the recent hiatus
The most recent hiatus was triggered by a few things. My father passed away
at the end of November so I wasn't in the mindset to do the show for a while.
Simultaneously, WBLQ switched from 96.7 FM to AM 1230, a much larger radio station.
That change kept me pretty preoccupied during the business day at WBLQ in my
capacity as Office Manager. Shortly after making the switch to 1230 (while Rotten
Radio was still on hiatus) we started getting in calls complaining about some
of the other programing on the station being a bit too extreme (like the metal
show and a couple others). The down side of having a bigger radio station and
more listeners is that you are under a larger microscope.
It became apparent to me that if Rotten Radio was to return at all it would
have to go back to being censored. After all, if people are gonna call and complain
about other shows that they think are too extreme, what would they think of
me playing uncensored rap? Going censored again is just something I'm not interested
in doing... at all. I just don't have the time to make radio edits anymore and
I feel like it would be taking a step backwards.
In the end I guess a part of me also just wants to do other things. Rotten Radio
certainly isn't the first radio show I've done and it wont be my last. I have
actually had a couple other projects in mind for a couple years now. Also, just
because the show is over now, that doesn't mean that it couldn't return someday
down the road in some other form. One very cool side effect of the show being
on hiatus is that I have been able to just sit back and be a fan of the music
I love so much that I wanted to do this show in the first place! I always feel
the need to be involved in the music I listen to so you never know what will
happen.
So there it is... the website will be kept up and running for archival reasons
and you will still eb able to download the old interviews, ill still log into
the myspace
from time to time also to see whats up and the twitter
has really already become a personal page for myself so thats how ill treat
that.
Finally, I just want to thank everyone that has ever listened to, appeared on,
helped out with, promoted, downloaded an interview from, or even heard of Rotten
Radio. The amount of love the show has been shown over the years is something
I am very proud of and it really means a lot to me! Stay Rotten!
- Lorren