VOTE WITH YOUR DOLLAR FOR INCREASED CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT
WRWK consumes about $40 per day in overhead between rent, insurance, phones, cable, transmitters and mics, etc. It all counts up.
You can help make all this happen:
- Donations in the form of usable radio or audio equipment
- Donate yourself by volunteering at WRWK LP FM to create shows/programming or editing or organizing it
- Volunteering to help with Social media or our WordPress website
- Telling us well in advance of events you are working on so we can gear up to cover them with you and work to make the event a success and a reusable resource.
- Lastly if all else fails, Donate $: recurring monthly donations allow us to put our attention on radio stuff
During its first year WRWK 93.9 The Work FM has witnessed, covered and supported increased engagement in citizen action in a Swing Vote District of Chesterfield County Virginia which in this last year:
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- 1) Chesterfield last week this fall replaced their 7th seat in the US House of Representatives replaced the Republican with the other party for the first time since 1968!
- 2) elected THE FIRST WOMAN to US 7th on top of that!
So that part is going great! I just need WRWK to be more self-sufficient so I can go away and do the health thing for a while.
We are halfway to our goal of $10k for larger capital expenses, we have raised nearly $5000 toward this but our monthly expenses, less flashy and exciting, still fall short.
- -pay rent while were getting a new underwriting director up to speed. Overall its costs about $40/day to keep us on the air!
- -raise our antenna higher for less distortion and dead spots. We’re as high as we can get without significant modifications to the property we are renting so this will be either renting time on another tower with a linking system or we spend several thousand to build a taller tower where we are. Height makes ALL the difference! As an example 91.7 CSN International is only 19 watts but they are also 243 feet Above Ground Level compared to our 49 feet.
- -improve our ability to go to live events (need a Verizon hotspot and better mix-board and audio software/gear). We need better microphones, remote mics, noise cancelling earphones and mics for noisy events, boom microphones for wandering speakers and audience, boundary mics for crowds, better mixboards to accomodate all those inputs as well as multiple and variable Line Level inputs and outputs. We need better connection for the remote signal such as preferably pro gear for remote broadcasting, and until then a better internet connection where we don’t have to rely on the venue such as a full bandwdith Verizon Hot Spot and remote signal booster for when we are in basements or metal buildings that block the wireless signal. We need a faster more reliable laptop that has fully functional hinges, sound cards etc. (its amazing how many laptops have TERRIBLE sound inputs on them!) Maybe a USB “smart mixer” that functions as a multi-input sound card to replace the junk that is common to most laptops these days.
We need a promotional budget for live events. - -Promotional Budget … there’s no “build it and they will come” now in this multi-verse of media options. We have to let people know we exist and what we have innovated next CONSTANTLY. We also could use ideas from you on how to let people know what we’re doing and how to reach us from anywhere!
we have specifically organized our audio bitstream to be monaural and as low a bitstream rate (40kbps) to conserve your cell phone and internet bandwidth so to save us all from “suffer the buffer” of audio that stops and starts or takes forever to start that is endemic to higher bandwidth audio streams. - Sound protection between us and our neighbor as well between the admin room and the studio.
- Better mixboard (preferably an actual broadcast mixboard as we’re currently using a studio mixboard with scratch switches that causes mics to often not actually connect to you the listener)
- better earphones and earphone distribution system for our hosts and guests
- Better computers that will stay on and keep up … preferably windows 7 or 8 and/or Linux.
- Uninterruptible Power supplies of commercial grade size as well as preferably with alternative input source (some accept solar panel inputs)