Radio-Info Merger

by **BroadcastDoc** » Thu Aug 02, 2012 11:00 pm

Chicago owners merge Radio-Info with talk radio publication:
http://timeoutchicago.com/arts-culture/ ... ublication

On a personal note...

This site was created from the ashes of the "old" Radio-Info. R-I was created in part by Lance Venta, the late Doug Fleming, and our own Sam Buca. It was a fantastic resource and a great industry forum, long before forums were very widespread.

The people involved did it for the love of radio. Many of the people here - myself, Kent, NECRAT, Adam, and others were moderators and participants in the Engineering sections of the forum. Many of the people that post here were long time R-I posters. Lance encouraged us to be moderators in the purest sense of the term. We weren't to censor or control - we were to facilitate discussion. We were allowed to have and state opinions, and even to disagree! Really the only rule was not to moderate a thread that we were participating in. It led to lively, candid discussions that really were appreciated by many.

Then a few bad things happened.

Unfortunately Doug was taken from us much too soon. Almost immediately after his passing, Doug's mother went to court to freeze out Lance and Sam and take control of the site, to avoid having to pay to buy them out. She was successful, and changed the site into something very different. She chose to find ways to "monetize" the traffic on the site that we all collectively help build and hired high-profile writers to blog about radio. The forums were an afterthought (after all, it was harder to sell ads on a forum!) and rather than have knowledgeable, passionate moderators who really were there to foster discussion instead of censor, she "fired" all of us and opted for editors that hide behind generic names and are basically there to delete posts and ban people who they feel get out of line. While there is certainly plenty of "wheat" on their forums, there is also a lot of "chaff". There's no doubt that they've created something that became very successful, but they did it on the backs of a lot of people who poured their life into it only to be completely "erased" from the institutional memory of the site.

We decided to put this site together as kind of a way to continue the work Sam, Lance, Doug, and everyone else involved at the old Radio-Info did. The greatest compliment I've ever received was from Lance, one of the site's founders: "It's the only board that has kept the original spirit of R-I alive." I consider that a great honor.

So in some ways, the sale of Radio-Info is bittersweet. It's sad that the founders have been all but forgotten, but it hopefully closes a chapter in R-I's history that's still a sore spot for many of us.

by **Deep Thought** » Fri Aug 03, 2012 12:02 am

Radio-Info has been dead for awhile now. It was time to put the zombie down.

You guys did it right...don't look back. I had a similar personal experience at a large telecom site where I generated a lot of street cred, helped convince the largest telecom corporation in the country to officially participate in its forums, and made the owner a lot of money. Then I was not only forced out, I was actually banned from the place by a new manager who filled the moderator ranks with his friends. No loss for me but the place is a mess now.

I know it's hard to put that much into a site and then watch it be destroyed, but that's the risk you take when you're not the owner. You don't have that problem here. :mrgreen:

Keep up the good work! I'm glad you tolerate me....

by **RGORJANCE** » Fri Aug 03, 2012 8:20 am

This forum is so well done that I doubt anyone could do a better effort.

I have long been very impressed at the huge amount of contributions of help that appear here. Keep up the fantastic good work. Special thanks to everyone.

Fossil

by **Sam Buca** » Fri Aug 03, 2012 9:43 am

The launch of v2: http://web.archive.org/web/200307220708 ... -info.com/

Unfortunately, my CSS-based Web 2.0 v3 never made it to production. It was a happy orange/blue type of layout with floating, rounded boxes. I wanted to integrate airchexx and tophour into it.

Two questions: what happened to Julius May? I still want to take that guy to lunch next time I'm in philly. Also, what happened to tophour.net?

by **BroadcastDoc** » Fri Aug 03, 2012 10:03 am

Check http://www.tophour.com - that seems to work. I remember Julius!

by **Tim Burke** » Sat Aug 04, 2012 11:43 am

Even Google thinks the new Radio-Info is terrible:

(or... Radio-Info just doesn't know how to patch their message board software.)

by **Sam Buca** » Sat Aug 04, 2012 1:08 pm

BroadcastDoc wrote:Check http://www.tophour.com - that seems to work. I remember Julius!

Weeeeeeell.....I always thought it used .net. Today I learned it did not

I'll have to look him up on Facebook. See if he remembers me.

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

by **NECRAT** » Sat Aug 04, 2012 1:11 pm

Tophour changed a while back when they changed ISPs.

by **Shane** » Mon Aug 06, 2012 11:06 pm

Scott Fybush refers to Tophour as a sister site to his and regularly was posting IDs there. I don't follow him as closely since he went to a pay-to-see model. Not on Tophour but on his Northeast Radio Watch site.

by **NECRAT** » Tue Aug 07, 2012 1:57 pm

What gets me is how callas and disrespectful Doug's mother Diana is. Reading her comments on the article makes you realize, she had absolutely no clue what Doug's vision was/is, and had absolutely no respect, what-so-ever for anyone. She's a vicious bitter old hag who didn't give two shits who she stepped over to try and make a profit from a website that was designed to be a friendly place for people to discuss the craft. Notice in the article how there is no mention of Lance or Tanim. They went out of their way to make sure these two didn't exist. Same with Sam. I wasn't sure I wanted to write this but after the fact, now, I don't care. Especially hearing some of things I've heard in the recent days.

I wish I could still find the email/Instant Message back from about either late 2000/early 2001, when I was a moderator at the even older radio-info. (Before v2). I sent Lance an email, or an IM, one of the two, that went "Lance, I think we should have an engineering subforum on the site". It was my belief at the time, that there was enough technical people posting, that they would like the idea of an engineering forum to discuss technical things. There hadn't been one yet, just the standard TV and Radio pages. Obviously, that became one of the more popular forums on the site, which carried over. And clearly I wasn't alone in thinking this, as demonstrated here by Chris, Kent, Adam, and Sam, that the desire to have a discussion for engineering folks, for the fun of it, was a good idea.

When Chris Tarr approached me about this forum he was launching, I thought, "what a great idea", and that was why I quickly jumped on board. I started inviting everyone I knew, to come to this forum. I know of several more who are just readers here. They don't post, but they do read. (Hi Mark!)

It was a sad day for Radio Info when Doug passed away, it continued to be sad the way Diana did the nonsense she did, and it's still sad to see how the history is forgotten over there.

And Mark Mueller, yes, we tolerate you, most of the time... (Just Kidding. You are considered one of the biggest assets on this forum, and won't have the rug pulled out from under you here like over at that other "big telco forum.")