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Boston Radio Watch Blogspot

N

nowradioguy

Star Participant
Does anyone know if this site is still in business?

There has not been a new post thereon since July 25th of this year. I sent an enquiry to the site master about a month ago but received no response.
 
nowradioguy said:
Has the site owner ceased operations? Has (s)he been ill or out of the country?
Click to expand...

My guess? Like so many other bloggers, podcasters, etc...they tire of the effort to put forth something with very little in return. How many podcasts have faded off? How many blogs are left fallow?

(That, and maybe his contacts in sportradio are no longer feeding him information) ;-)

Add to that the general malaise about anything radio. Interest in ALL forms of radio are at an all time low. (CW, CB, SW, AM, FM, HD, Scanners, Ham, Etc.)

Many of us remember when this board would be bustling with activity and gossip. ;-)
 
Wimmmex said:
My guess? Like so many other bloggers, podcasters, etc...they tire of the effort to put forth something with very little in return. How many podcasts have faded off? How many blogs are left fallow?
Click to expand...

It's also simply becoming much more difficult to make time to do anything you don't get paid for here toward the end of the second decade of the "New Millennium of Rampant Inflation and Usurious Greed".
 
Good point about not having the interest, or the time, or getting little in return. He is quite active on twitter though and has passed along word of format changes etc.

This blog, below, still active. I used to contribute to it ("After Election Day Comes Christmas") but eventually got too busy and found myself on the boards and Facebook more:

The Boston Radio Blog http://bostonradio.blogspot.com/
Shnyder's blog at the similar http://bostonradiowatch.blogspot.com/
 
There are ways to turn blog posts into tweets and tweets into blog posts. You can put a Twitter widget on the blog, and that'll cover both sites.
 
Rapidly approaching the 25th anniversary of NERW over here... and if Mark has truly hung up BRW, I'm sorry to see him go.

(No apologies, however, for going to a subscription model a few years back. NERW would have ended by now, otherwise.)
 
fybush said:
No apologies, however, for going to a subscription model a few years back. NERW would have ended by now, otherwise.
Click to expand...

To be honest, though, yours is more than a traditional blog. You do real enterprise reporting, and I always enjoy your photos.

Don Barrett has threatened many times to shut down his laradio.com blog, and he comes back every time. He could easily charge for what he does too.
 
Mark hasn't done a farewell column yet--maybe it'll occasionally pop up like WJIB's Let's Talk About Radio (admittedly Bob hasn't done one of those since before the FM translator went on...and the last time was tough to hear due to late sunrise on 740 signal).
 
Wimmmex said:
My guess? Like so many other bloggers, podcasters, etc...they tire of the effort to put forth something with very little in return. How many podcasts have faded off? How many blogs are left fallow?
Click to expand...

It's tough to do a blog or website that demands constant new content. At times, the amount of work can be staggering.

But there are rewards, such as seeing a higher and higher page view count or receiving nice notes from users.

However, I am occasionally astounded that there are users of free, non-commercial sites who write and abrasively demand additional content, changes in site design or make comments about relatively little errors as if one were responsible for world hunger or global warning.

I've been doing my historical preservation site for more than a decade now, and there have been moments where one annoying user has made me question the continuation of what is an 8-hour-a-day job at a minimum. But when I reflect on the total users, I realize that I am just getting a sample of the blind, irrational rudeness that is prevalent in our society today and protected by the anonymity of a made-up user name.
 
TheBigA said:
To be honest, though, yours is more than a traditional blog. You do real enterprise reporting, and I always enjoy your photos.

Don Barrett has threatened many times to shut down his laradio.com blog, and he comes back every time. He could easily charge for what he does too.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the kind words. I've never thought of NERW as a "blog," per se; having started back in (gulp) 1994, it long predates anything that would later be called "blogging."

I always thought of it as a column, and still do, even as it's migrated through the years from the old rec.radio.broadcasting (where the late Bill Pfeiffer came up with the "Radio Watcher" concept that both Mark and I adapted - the whole reason I'm NERW is that he got to "Boston" Radio Watch first, so I did "New England," later "NorthEast") to email lists to bostonradio.org to fybush.com.

As for Don, I think I still have a PayPal subscription that tosses 15 bucks his way every year. It's well worth it for the community he connects.
 
DavidEduardo said:


I've been doing my historical preservation site for more than a decade now, and there have been moments where one annoying user has made me question the continuation of what is an 8-hour-a-day job at a minimum. But when I reflect on the total users, I realize that I am just getting a sample of the blind, irrational rudeness that is prevalent in our society today and protected by the anonymity of a made-up user name.
Click to expand...

I've been pretty lucky, all in all. After giving away NERW content for free from 1994 until the mid-2000s, my switch to a voluntary donation model produced a little grumbling but also plenty of positive response. I knew there'd be more grumbling and some lost traffic when the column went to a mandatory paywall a few years later, but by and large people have understood that what started as a hobby while I had full-time employment back in my WBZ days is now a business that has to have subscribers and advertisers if it's going to justify all the time that goes into it. (And of course there are more mouths to feed in the household than there were back then, not to mention college coming along in a few years!)

I've never known much about what else Mark does outside of BRW, and I don't believe we've ever met in person after all these years. Whatever his plans are next, I wish him well.
 
fybush said:
Rapidly approaching the 25th anniversary of NERW over here... and if Mark has truly hung up BRW, I'm sorry to see him go.

(No apologies, however, for going to a subscription model a few years back. NERW would have ended by now, otherwise.)
Click to expand...

Your incisive and engaging posts certainly justify a subscription model. Oh, and I just flipped my office calendar to reveal a nice shot of Albuquerque!
 
Kemosabe said:
Your incisive and engaging posts certainly justify a subscription model. Oh, and I just flipped my office calendar to reveal a nice shot of Albuquerque!
Click to expand...

That's such a photogenic area! Some year I want to go during Balloon Fest to get some shots of balloons near (but not TOO NEAR) the KKOB tower.
 
Don't know, but last name Shnyder.
On Twitter: "Best gig in the building. Reading this Twitter feed is strictly optional. RTs (retweets) do not constitute endorsement of views!"
 
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