Jump to content

Whole Wheat Radio

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Afiler (talk | contribs) at 02:47, 7 March 2013 (Undid revision 537819952 by Shii (talk)). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Whole Wheat Radio
Whole Wheat Radio logo
Type of site
Internet radio
Independent music
Community
URLwholewheatradio.org
CommercialNo
RegistrationFree and optional, required for editing but not listening

Whole Wheat Radio (WWR) was a listener-controlled, internet-only webcast and Mediawiki wiki based in Talkeetna, Alaska. It was centered around independent music aired 24 hours a day, financially and operationally maintained by an all-volunteer community as a grassroots alternative to mainstream media. WWR's listener-driven webcast and real-time interactive community distinguished it from other streaming webcasts, social music networks, and peer to peer music file sharing websites. Whole Wheat Radio was an online community radio station. The webcast ceased broadcasting on October 20, 2010.[1]

Live broadcasts

A volunteer reading on-air at Whole Wheat Radio

The Ranting and Raving News Muffin: Somewhat regularly, except in the summer, Kloss and Golton would go live on-air at 11 a.m. (Alaska time) on weekdays for "The Ranting 'n' Raving News Muffin" show which featured news, music, opinion, humor and slices of life. The shows were often referred to simply as "Rants" because listeners considered loud outbursts of emphatically expressed opinion to be the most memorable highlights of the show. The Rant was one of the earliest (Oct. 2004) live shows recorded for a live internet audience and then made available within minutes for podcast listeners.[1]

Live Interviews: Other live broadcasts included Golton interviewing musicians who were visiting Talkeetna on-air. The interviews usually included live performances, and were recorded for rebroadcast.

House Concerts: In addition to its normal musical webcast, WWR webcast live house concerts held at Whole Wheat Radio facilities in Talkeetna.

Spontaneous Live Broadcasts: Frequent spontaneous live broadcasts included coverage of events such as flooding in Talkeetna in 2006, neighbors dropping in, open mics while cooking steaks on a campfire in the yard, and Friday night merriment.

Live broadcasts were often recorded for rebroadcast and some were later available for download.

Podcasts/Audio Magazines

WWR was the first webcast to podcast as well as include other people's podcasts in the WWR audio stream. The first WWR podcast [2] was created on October 3, 2004 [3]. On October 12, 2004 Doc Searls [4] mentioned Kloss's blog entry "The Bridge Between Webcasting And Full-Fledged Radio"[5] and called WWR "...one of the legendary internet webio stations". For several months, daily "rants", which listeners only heard live for the previous two years, were recorded and within minutes automatically posted as podcasts. WWR produced the first podcasts of live house concerts. Hundreds of hours of audio which were available as podcasts are archived for on-demand listening on the WWR website.[6]

Shortly after making the first podcasts of the "rants" available, taking podcasts and RSS feeds a step further, Whole Wheat Radio became the first to use podcast "channels." On October 12, 2004 [7] Kloss created several subscription channels (e.g.: Rants Channel, Comedy Channel, Podcaster Tips Channel, Music Channel and All Channels) to enable listeners to be able to control what content they received in their podcast aggregator. Listeners were then able to have more control of their feed. By subscribing to a particular channel rather than having listeners download everything that Whole Wheat Radio put into podcast form, wasting listener's bandwidth and Whole Wheat Radio's bandwidth, they could subscribe solely to a feed of interest e.g. Comedy only or House Concerts only.

Audio experimentation

WWR experimented with many technologies designed to incorporate grassroots audio into the stream itself. Examples include:

  1. Multiple listeners being able to talk live on-air via Paltalk
  2. Multiple listeners being able to talk live on-air via various IM voice services
  3. Live audio shows originating from other sources (i.e. live shows from Kulak's Woodshed) being broadcast on WWR
  4. Automated inclusion of listener FTP uploads of audio material into the webcast
  5. Automated inclusion of podcasts into the webcast
  6. Automated text-to-speech announcements when listeners have updated their blogs
  7. Listener telephone calls (Phonegrams) being a part of the normal webcast
  8. Automated text-to-speech announcements of listener horoscopes, weather forecasts and 'today in history' notes

Latterly, only Phonegrams and text-to-speech announcements were heard on a regular basis. Occasionally, new experimental audio sources obtained in real-time from the internet were included in the stream. Based on listener's overall reaction, airing of that particular audio source wes either continued or not.

House concerts

Whole Wheat Radio began presenting and live-webcasting house concerts in July, 2004, after a 24-by-28-foot (7.3 by 8.5 m) cabin (dubbed the Wheat Hole) was built to make enough room for an in-house audience of 50. The construction was motivated by frequent contacts from traveling artists looking for a venue in Talkeetna. There are few opportunities to perform or hear singer-songwriter music in rural Alaska; Kloss and Golton wanted to find a financially feasible way to present some of these artists, and realized that building a simple, economical space would add the opportunity to webcast the concerts live on Whole Wheat Radio increasing the audience size by as many as 90 more online listeners.

Both the in-house and internet attendees pitched in during the concert to pay the artist with online donations or CD sales. Whole Wheat Radio gave 100% of the night's income to the performer.

House concerts were recorded with high audio quality and later posted as audio magazines for download via RSS feed.

Performers have included Mark Erelli, Peter Mulvey, Cliff Eberhardt, Stephen Fearing, Brooks Williams, and Kristina Olsen.

History

The original 12x12 Whole Wheat Radio cabin

2002 - The original 12x12 cabin

Whole Wheat Radio began as "Radio Free Talkeetna" in August 2002. Programmer Jim Kloss started the live interactive webcast immediately after high speed DSL access arrived in the small village of Talkeetna, Alaska. His partner, singer/songwriter Esther Golton, soon joined in the project with the two broadcasting live on the stream from her self-built 12-by-12-foot (3.7 by 3.7 m) cabin which was heated by wood, lacked running water, and utilized an outhouse. The tiny cabin did have the three essential elements for internet connectivity: electricity (via an extension cord), a telephone line, and a resident computer programmer.

The website associated with the live stream quickly incorporated a live chat, information and links to the music being played, as well as information on the whereabouts of listeners based on their IP address. Kloss wrote the software in an outdated version of MS-DOS QuickBasic that dynamically controlled the playlist based on changing criteria.

At first the musical fare consisted of Kloss' personal collection of major-label artists. After learning about potential royalty payment issues with the RIAA and webcasting, Whole Wheat Radio soon switched to webcasting only independent musicians not associated with the RIAA. Kloss and Golton were surprised to discover a wealth of musicians whose CDs rarely receive airplay, and quickly became strong advocates for the discovery of professional and semi-professional, seldom-heard independent artists.

By December 2002, the name of the webcast was changed to Whole Wheat Radio.

In Whole Wheat Radio's first year, Kloss added many features including listener requests that play automatically, text-to-voice semi-intelligent "EJs" (Electronic Dee-Jays), the Say-It button, which allowed listeners to type messages into the chat and have an EJ say their words over the air, online games that involved collecting a valueless commodity called "wheatberries", personalized listener profiles, the ability to easily post links and photos in the chat and a group drawing room among other things. Listeners enthusiastically participated in these interactive features, often suggesting new ones for Kloss to program.

2008 - Local involvement

Upon opening in September, 2007 the Wheat Palace was made available on a free/donation basis to local community/arts/music groups as well as continuing the tradition of hosting house concerts. Events and groups which have used the space include the Talkeetna Playground, dance classes, Red Cross CPR/first aid classes, art shows, home crafters, craft classes, musicians practicing and public and private service group meetings.[2]

2010 - Shutdown

On October 20, 2010, the Whole Wheat Radio official website was replaced by a message from Jim Kloss, Whole Wheat Radio founder, stating that he was stopping all audio streaming and shutting the website down, saying in his goodbye note[3] that "I no longer love this job."[4]

Reception

  • CD Baby's president Derek Sivers recommends Whole Wheat Radio.[5]

Audio

Whole Wheat Radio Wiki
Interview clip where Jim Kloss discusses wiki and Whole Wheat Radio.
Problems playing this file? See media help.

References

  1. ^ Deyoe, Sue (2010-10-26). "Whole Wheat Radio ends its 8 year run". KTNA. Retrieved 2011-06-09. [...] announced the end of his website [...] unique online radio station over 8 years ago, which might have been a first for Alaska in the online world.
  2. ^ "Talkeetna's Whole Wheat Radio signs off the Web". http://www.adn.com. Anchorage Daily News. Retrieved 9 February 2012. {{cite web}}: External link in |work= (help)
  3. ^ Kloss, Jim. "Goodby Note". wholewheatradio.org. Retrieved 9 February 2012.
  4. ^ "Talkeetna's Whole Wheat Radio signs off the Web". http://www.adn.com. Anchorage Daily News. Retrieved 9 February 2012. {{cite web}}: External link in |work= (help)
  5. ^ http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/PCWorld/story?id=1324958
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Whole_Wheat_Radio&oldid=542499142"