On today’s mediageek radioshow, which airs 5:30 PM on WEFT 90.1 FM Champaign, IL, my friend John Anderson from DIYmedia.net will be on to discuss recent happenings in the micropower radio world — especially some of the legal strategies being employed by stations actively challenging the FCC in court. We’ll be taking calls and e-mails for listeners who want to ask questions or comment. The number is 217-359-5483, the e-mail is pau@mediageek.org.
As a last-minute decision, on last week’s radioshow, we decided to have listener call-ins for our first time.The show’s topic was again the new low-power FM station going on the air in Urbana. We scheduled the show because the station was about to hold its first big public information meeting. We thought that it would be more interesting to field questions from listeners about the station than having Mike, the station’s founding member, and I cover a lot of the same territory again.
Considering that WEFT does almost zero listener call-ins and that we’ve never done it on our show before, I’d say it was success because we got a couple of calls and e-mails — enough to keep things moving through the half-hour.
The time goes pretty quickly when you’re fielding calls, and it adds a nice dynamic element to the show. Of course, the call-ins are probably less valuable to people who listen to the on-line archives, except when the questions are really good. We won’t do call-ins every week, because we want to continue to fill the time with reporting and often do pre-recorded interviews. But I think I’d like to make it something like a monthly feature.
If anyone is a mediageek listener, either on WEFT or on-line, I’m interested in what you think about call-ins. Please send an e-mail and let me know.