Wow, seven years doing Self Help Radio. A stronger man might be able to pry himself away from such a tar pit. But not me!
Here's a funny story. I never really intended to do a show like Self Help Radio, by which I mean a weekly show organized around a particular theme. I would have preferred to simply do a freeform show like the one I did at KVRX in the 1990s, which was mainly music organized around me letting my id completely free to say things disturbing & arguably humorous. But KOOP radio at the time was a very dark, shell-shocked place, on account of the struggles for power in the late 1990s. (You can read about that from the losing side here.) This is not the place to talk about the later struggle to revitalize KOOP, something with which I was involved, but to just point out that at the time, the so-called Programming Committee, which met about three times a year, & which was chosen by the Board of Directors, had (possibly as a result of the crises) virtually no power nor authority to remove, reschedule or replace KOOP shows (the Board did that, or someone on the Board did it, & then reported to the Board at the next meeting).
I have (you might have noticed) a varied interest in music, which some call "freeform," but the people to whom I spoke at the station, some on the Programming Committee, would discount such a show added to KOOP's line-up. "We already have a free-form show," they'd say, which was true - I guess they thought they only needed one? They also had a punk rock show, an indie music show, a blues show, three country shows (grandfathered in from the old days, these programmers had always raised lots of money for the station & never been a threat), a reggae show, an experimental music show, a world music show, & two jazz shows (old & new, of course). The only thing I could have offered, if I had to, was an electronic music show, but I felt a little like a phony even proposing it - although I'm doing one now, at the time I didn't know as much about the genre & it would have become repetitive (in a bad way) fast.
What did I do? How did I fill my time those two years I waited for a show? Well, I subbed other shows, & I kept volunteering until, as the Programming Committee still had no power, the President of the Board of Directors was forced to fire a programmer who was advertising her place of business on the air, & space opened up so the Board gave me a show. It's amazing to think about it... But that's really how it happened. & I was noticed not because of my exciting show idea, but because I was a good volunteer.
Why did I stay with the Self Help Radio idea? Didn't I think that, now that I had a slot, I couldn't possibly lose it unless I ran afoul of the people in charge or broke FCC rules? I would never do the latter, but I was afraid of the former (which happened two years later - but that's another story), & another show was added the same time as mine which, though technically a jazz show, was sufficiently nestled in a sub-genre that wasn't at the time represented on the station, & was far more defensible than just "here's a freeform show dum de dum."
The Station Manager at the time loved the name - she was of a perverse bent anyway, & appreciated the irony, although some people to this day (those who can't, you know, just look the show up on Google or whatever) still send me life-transforming class information & the like.
The postscript is that I really, really like organizing shows around themes. I like that it helps me corral my out-of-control music collection. In the old days, I came up with my theme, like, the night before. Now I work on them for months sometimes. Though, really, the theme I'm going to revisit on Wednesday was one of my cleverest.
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