So good old INSP is off air doing fix it duty, bout time, too bad our own cable system here doesn’t do that.
There’s all kinds of things I hear like that. you bring up a subject say building the radio station, or some other community mutually beneficial thing like that and you’ll get noise, like great, we sure do need that, yet if you go to them in a fund drive and ask hey how about putting up some money, even $100.00 towards it it’s hey , but I can’t afford it. Really, you want something for nothing, is that what I’m hearing. The same thing I saw this evening on Tracey Dukes page, some diddy, an old friend put up about doing a renewing the series of the Dukes-of-Hazzard series, original cast and all. Besides the fact several of that original cast are long gone to that Boars Nest in Heaven, the rest are too busy with other projects as well are, just too old. As far as renewing a new series, the Knytes and the Wolf-Pack have been barking and howling on that for at least 10 years now. The thing gets down to one simple thing, green. We had in mind a series that was a whole combination, of Vantage Point, Dukes-of-Hazzard, MoonRunners, HollyWood Knights , all rolled into one, going beyond the Dukes into the rest of Hazzard County. Trouble is, you can pitch script all damn day at Studios, and networks all you want, looking for someone else to fund it and they’ll laugh. Go in with serious support money, all pre paid ad dollars and such and then pitch an idea, and watch Warner Brothers, FX , and CMT all roll out the easy chair give you a can of Skoal with a gold plated lid and really be sniffing all around you.
On that think of it as one of my good friends who owns and manages KBAR in Rupert Idaho. Instead of tying up his payroll department with pay checks, Kim did something smart. Let those who want to be on KBAR , go out gather their own advertisers, and pay him $150.00 an hour the syndicate overnight. That $150.00 per hour don’t sound like much, but hey do the math multiplied by just two shows Zeb Bell’s show in the morning and another in the afternoon, that’s $24,k a month. Income, without having to think about programming, selling time for it nothing, rent out the studio, have a jock sitter there in case the radio gear gets a case of diarrhea , but still pure income. Something I’m looking to do for 12 hours during the day, while I do my shows HazzardAyre and Dixie-Diesel-Maximum Overdrive overnight. That way I only need to get two seat cover for co host anchors rather than 4. Not a bad plan. Instant cash in the stash. But just about most small stations are doing this, and Hollywood is no exception. Want something on TV or movie screen, go in with your own merchandizing, and funding, the studios are more apt to match your funds, but these days, instant cash to make films or TV series pilots, are pretty much dead. No matter how much bull manure is spread. Sure there are film contests out there for Indy Films, but read the fine print, it say, many will enter few will win. Money talks, bull walks. Hollywood, radio stations anyone these days are looking for the $’s and don’t care about helping you to make your cause. If you want help in a cause, the first thing; be a minority, I don’t care what, best one is Mexican. Be a female, that’s so terribly poor that her stockings are anklets. Third have at least 7 kids, and be a recovering drug addict of some sort, or someone that went to prison, or at least jail. Then you get the attention of Facebook, FundMe, KickStarter, forget being a properly discharged Marine Combat aviator looking to build a radio network and station, for the benefit of all who flew and still fly for this nations defense, and FundMe, KickStarter, etc will ignore you like you have an untreatable STD.
Likewise try to start something in the west that has anything to do with educating northerners about the war of northern aggression(Civil-War) and you’ll get fought every way but loose. It’s like teaching the only true gospel, on this earth, about the teachings in the Book Of Mormon, in both cases, you know there are things that apply to both, but as hard as you try to teach the truth, you’ll get fought, blocked, shunned. Well you get the idea.
Try to put both those things together in one package, and well ya’ll just better be a Marine with cover overhead what with the fallout of the shelling you’ll receive.
But don’t count out the itty bitty, HazzardAyre Radio started out as a simple one pole, educational radio station just on the outskirts of West Point Idaho. (yes there is one) at 50 watts. After trying at all too many area then stations of getting one to allow us to do at least a weekend version of an all night trucker radio show. It wasn’t until a good old boy at a small fm there KMTW FM 96.1 , Kelly Carlson, let this old rebel canine on the air. I did 4 hours Friday, 4 hours Saturday, with the green from Dads trucking company, but hey I got on. Then Charlie Tuma then GM of KLIX 1310 put me on the air. There were others, most did not like push the edge radio. So after the well had ran dry, the then TeenAge Truckers Association the starting group, that is now the United American Independent Truckers Association the parent organization of the Knytes of Anarchy as well as the AyreWolvez, fired up a , at first a pirate station. The FCC revenuers showed up , said you need a license boy, and by 1982 we had one, and kicked the butt of every radio station in western Idaho, northern Utah, and Nevada. None of them could program, or dared program what we did. The year of 1988, I created the first OTR(Over the Road) truckers radio show west of the divide. That year I went to the National Association of Broadcasters(NAB) show in Lost Wages Nevada. A syndication company owned by Bill Mack of WBAP out of Dallas/Fort Worth, signed our little show up, and it wasn’t long before Dixie Diesel Trucker Radio, sponsored by the Dixie Diesel Shop of Idaho. went on the air on weekends and we brought home an Emmy the first year. A Grammy the second year, and this went on until 1993. I suffered a great personal loss, from a death in the squadron, and partly quit. The in 1995 , through a series of being in the right places at the right time, was able to buy the Interstate Radio Network, ITRN, became the Dixie Diesel Trucker Radio Network.
But it all started small. Just like both the TeenAge Truckers as well as the Hazzard County Knytes. In both cases, we met in a small pop stand, with about 10 to 15 people of like minds. We got it together and said just because someone says you can’t do it here, reply, why the Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot can’t we?
Then do it anyway.
No kind of business or enterprise starts out really big, and gives instant gratification. NOTHING, it takes at least 4 to 6 years, before a tree bares fruit, and at least that long for a new business to bare cash for the stash.
It just don’t happen kaboom. Even music stars, sure some get a big boost on American Idiot, and other shows, but those kids and performers have been at it for at least 4 to 5 years, sang in bars, clubs, and mini shows , long before they catch the eye of a agent, or producer. You have to have a track record, but look at our club today. Between the parent organization, the Knytes, the AyreWolvez, The Toew Bros, There is just over 500,000 members coast to coast and around the globe. But it all started over a pancake and coffee at the Polish Palace now the Snake River Grill in 1982. The TeenAge Truckers began over Shirley Temples, at the Ogden Holiday in , in 1973.
We have lasted this long simply because all 500,000 are dedicated to the core of what we started with, being the voice of the Interstate, as well as be that organization that doesn’t just sit around giving lip service, but does something.
So the next time and I do joke about it often, when some spoiled brat decides that just because we’re not the choir boys she expected, that the Reaper didn’t open as fast as she thought, when those who think I take up too much of their time, when the club is helping or about to help them, I laugh. Like I have said it before and I’ll say it again, its not the club that needs them, its them that needs the club.
TTYLY
