Radio Heritage Foundation
Christmas 2008 Newsletter
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Bangkok Crisis
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If you were one of hundreds of thousands of tourists stuck in Bangkok in the past few weeks, and told to listen to local radio to stay informed, how would you know where to find a station with programs in other than Thai? Our PAL AM Radio Guide would have directed you to 918 AM for English, French, Chinese and Japanese programs including hourly BBC News.
Just one of the benefits of using one of the free radio guide services at our website www.radioheritage.net, and one we know we have to upgrade in 2009 with the addition of our much delayed PAL FM Radio Guide.
Floods, tsunamis, earthquakes, coups, riots, terrorists and civil disturbance are all possible in the region, making it so important to know where to quickly find a local radio station with information in English that could save your life.
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Yes we can upgrade our radio guides. Here's how you can help!
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Can we do more to improve our PAL Radio Guides? Yes, we can! Can you help us? Yes, you can!
Here's how....email us if you find out of date or plain wrong data in our guides, tell us of new stations and programs in non-local languages for visitors and foreign residents, and make a donation to help us upgrade our guides in 2009.
Hello, I'm David Ricquish from the Radio Heritage Foundation, and I'd like to tell you a little about what's shaping up for 2009, and how you too can get involved to celebrate our radio heritage!
Thanks for helping in 2008
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Firstly, I'd like to thank everyone for helping to find a way to keep radio heritage safe, alive and interesting in 2008. Some radio stations have already picked up our 'Ten Top Ways to Save Your Station' tips and we'll make this program more widely available in 2009
Secondly, a special thanks to those who buy books, CDs and merchandise from us, and who have made donations in 2008. We have a very small budget, in fact our income in the year ended March 31 2008 was just US$3774.
It goes nowhere near our basic running costs, and I can assure you, even a quarter a day from each of you in 2009 would help us upgrade our services and keep our bank manager from looking too closely at our credit line!
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Make a donation this holiday season
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Would you like to make a donation today? You can use your VISA or Mastercard at the donation button on every page of www.radioheritage.net and I can also assure you that 100 cents of every dollar goes straight into protecting radio heritage.
Popular Culture
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During 2008, we've been working behind the scenes to redesign how we tell the stories of radio, people, events, music and places within the bigger picture of popular culture.
A bit like Wikipedia, you'll see we have some 'stubs' or introductory articles online about the radio dial in Australia 1931, California 1928, Shanghai 1941, New Zealand 1931 and 1978. If you haven't been to the site lately, go to www.radioheritage.net, look at them and then email us to tell us what you think of them.
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'Expanding 'stubs' in 2009'
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The idea is that these will expand to cover other places and periods, introducing even more stations on the radio dial. In 2009, we're looking to build a volunteer team that will begin to expand these 'stubs' even further, unpeeling more layers of radio and popular culture for us all to enjoy.
Have you seen our Art of Radio series? Currently we've got three similar 'stubs' covering Australia and New Zealand, Japan and Hawaii. These are scheduled to finally expand in 2009 and have the capacity to move offline into real exhibitions such as already successfully tested with the Art of Radio Japan Exhibition.
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'We want to commission articles'
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Will you help us in 2009? We already have a number of people standing by to work on several of these projects, but we need more. If you can volunteer research and write about the links between radio and popular culture, we want to commission articles from you.
Radio Archives
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You can see that we're more than just another radio 'archives' locked into the past! It's still vital though to collect the audio, images, art work and stories and we've been doing a lot of that this year.
Major new collections have added many thousands of new items and we're about to start a major cataloging and digitizing project in 2009. Our funding applications for this will be lodged in early 2009.
Our new software lets you upload and send your own materials directly into our new database. Other archives and libraries will partner us in this exciting move which finally unlocks their radio heritage collections too! We'll let you know when you can start uploading your own content.
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'Radio stations can also safely store
their audio archives with us too!'
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As you can see, behind the scenes, it's been a busy year, and before I leave you for 2008, here're some things you probably didn't know about us:
1. We're now registered with the Charities Commission [New Zealand CC25951] and you can see our registration at www.charities.govt.nz. Each year, we'll be lodging an annual report including our latest accounts.
Registration as a non-profit in Australia and the USA is under consideration so that donations can be tax deductable as they are in New Zealand.
2 We produce regular radio heritage documentaries for broadcast over Radio New Zealand International [www.rnzi.com] and during 2008, produced nearly 90 minutes of special programs for their 60th anniversary celebrations.
3 During the year, NZ On Air, funder of public broadcasting in New Zealand invited us to tender as an approved archive for the management contract to manage their national Sound Archives which have until now been run only by Radio New Zealand. Work continues in this area.
4. Our Kiwi Radio Campaign has been tested now for a full year, and has resulted in discoveries of many thousands of new audio and other items, help with a major social history radio exhibition with Te Manawa Museum in Palmerston North, plans for three major regional radio retrospective exhibitions in 2009 and much more.
The campaign is designed for local versions to be rolled out in Australia, California and Japan before 2015.
5. We produce the entire Pacific region content of radio broadcasting data for the UK based annual radio guide World Radio TV Handbook [www.wrth.com] published since 1948. This involves data from over 25 separate countries!
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A Word From Our Sponsors!
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We acknowledge the special help of our sponsors in 2008 - www.2day.com for website hosting services, www.pcwiz2u.co.nz for computer hardware, software and troubleshooting services, ProCopy in Wellington for printing services and www.apexrentals.co.nz for supply of a rental car to support the Kiwi Radio Campaign.
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Thinking Globally, Acting Locally
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As a New Zealand based non-profit, we take a broad Asia-Pacific approach to all our radio heritage activities. This is because the stories of radio across the region are so interwoven. It's also what makes our website www.radioheritage.net so popular with many hundreds of thousands of visitors including almost 20% returning visitors!
Our local programs are being tested in New Zealand from where the best can be rolled out in Australia, the USA, Canada, Japan, China and India and elsewhere.
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Remember, please make a donation this holiday season!
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We can do much more with your help, as our budget of just US$3744 needs your support this holiday season and throughout the coming year. Please use your VISA or Mastercard and donate today via the donation button on any page at www.radioheritage.net.
Again, we look forward to sharing more radio heritage good news with you in 2009, and wish you all the very best for Christmas, Holiday and New Year seasons!
David Ricquish
Chairman
Radio Heritage Foundation
PO Box 14339
Wellington 6241, NZ
Email: info@radioheritage.net
Web: www.radioheritage.net
Sharing the Stories of Pacific Radio
Connecting Radio Heritage & Popular Culture
PS.....since April 1, almost 20,000 hours have been spent online by visitors at www.radioheritage.net. Have a look yourself today and use our own Google search to dig deeper into the site and find out more!
