I don’t understand one thing. Why can’t an internet radio station turn a profit? Especially an internet station geared for a very specific market like the ex-pat community in Taiwan. Why the need to get a “real” radio license? With so many people with easy access to a computer I would think an internet station targeting a specific market might do okay money wise.
Pardon me if these are dumbass questions…
[quote=“Mr He”]Just curious. I went to a newtorking session arranged over forumosa earlier this year. There was a guy (poster, actually) plugging the idea of a radio station there.
They don’t look the same, was that the same guy?[/quote]
I think that if someone does it right, it might still work out. I know nothing about the radio business but I do see where WWRN fulfilled a need…and that is usually a good base to start on.
Got a bunch of Internet radio equipment laying around and lots of people sick and tired of ICRT. 
Sorry for rambling but the wheels are a’turning…
Get the managers/owners of the popular bars/restaurants/pubs to run the internet radion station on their own. Have volunteer DJs…sign up for a crack at stardom. I don’t know how much money they spend on advertising but I would imagine that those newspaper ads are expensive. They would be basically running the station for free advertising. Keep it running for a while and see where it goes.
[quote=“Durins Bane”]I don’t understand one thing. Why can’t an internet radio station turn a profit? Especially an internet station geared for a very specific market like the ex-pat community in Taiwan. Why the need to get a “real” radio license? With so many people with easy access to a computer I would think an internet station targeting a specific market might do okay money wise.
Pardon me if these are dumbass questions…[/quote]DB -
A very good question.
I also believe in the viability of something along these lines.
Plus, it would have the advantage of worlwide availability. This could be a plus for the right advertisers/sponsors.
You need a large enough number of ears glued to it at any one time, before any advertiser would start paying attention. I would say that a foreign internet radio would need 3,000-4,000 pairs of ears during prime time.
And, they would need to be concentrated in a geographic area. You try to get Taverncaptain to advertise on a radio, where the listener base consists of 5,000 people spread out over Asia, the US, Australia, and Europe, and you will fail.
Mr. He -
Understood, but, respectfuly, TavernCaptain is not the only potential advertiser/sponsor. Addressing specific demographics can be appealing to certain advertisers.
There is a lot to be said for targeted demographics/audiences.
And rate cards can have flexibility while the results are determined.
Just a thought. I am bloodly optimist.
One advantage of a network radio station is that you should be able to know exactly how many people are listening and where they are, unlike conventional radio stats which is an approximation based on surveys.
[quote=“TainanCowboy”]Mr. He -
Understood, but, respectfuly, TavernCaptain is not the only potential advertiser/sponsor. Addressing specific demographics can be appealing to certain advertisers.
There is a lot to be said for targeted demographics/audiences.
And rate cards can have flexibility while the results are determined.
Just a thought. I am bloodly optimist.[/quote]
I would imagine that Taverncaptain would get advertising cheap considering that he owns the hardware itself. 
Well…yes…there is that…lol 
I did not say that it would not work, all I said was that they would need a fair amount of listeners in order to make it an attractive venue for business here - and those listeners would have to be in Taiwan.
Let’s see what can you market to Foreigners living in Taiwan? Government infomercials to foreigners, bars, Subway, Mickey D, perhaps. Airlines, short vacations, costco, and stuff like that.
Services like Steve the mover might be good shots as well.
Back to the viability of WWRN for a second. People on these forums like to complain (and with good reason) about the sad state of the English media in Taiwan. The obvious answer is to start our own media.
We are fortunate that with the internet and Taiwan’s excellent broadband network structure, the infrastucture is alerady in place. There is no reason that we cannot start a community online newspaper with bureaus all over Taiwan that would kick the shit out of the Taipei Times, Taiwan News, and China Post.
People are already doing it in Korea:
Al Gore is doing it with TV:
There are a bunch of other examples at
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizen_journalism
I’m sure something similar could be done for radio.
Perhaps this is something that could be leveraged off of Formosa.com.
How does the The Formosa Times sound?
There could be many ways of supporting it. Advertising. listener/reader donation a la the Pacifica Foundation.
The key point is that the Internet has greatly reduced the costs of owning media outlets (no printing presses, distribution etc.) and also allows us in many cases to sidestep regulatory requirements (such as the ban on foreign ownership and even the need for a license).
Thanks for the long second.I now return you to your regular programming.
Feiren, good post.
I’ve been thinking a bit more over lunch. Alleycat’s pizza doesn’t half get the creative juices flowing.
What we have here is
a - an apparent demand for broadcast media serving the foreign community. (Clarification needed: are we talking about ‘western’ foreigners, or everyone?)
b - new technology and practises that make it possible to sidestep a lot of regulation
c - a pile of the necessary equipment sitting around looking for a buyer. Not much market for it so it’ll probably be cheap.
d - an enormous PR opportunity
I’ll tackle d first. Someone just got himself into the newspapers and if he has any sense he’ll be appearing soon on TV begging for forgiveness from everyone he’s hurt. He’s a likeable rascal who also speaks Chinese. If he tells his story well he’ll attract a certain amount of sympathy, but more importantly he’ll get the word out.
If the people who were drawn into his web seize this opportunity they can ride the bandwagon and promote the WWRN agenda. (But change the name, please!) And they can attract advertising or even investment money.
This is all a bit different from the ‘community’ approach advocated by Feiren. I’m not sure that my suggestion is better, and would welcome more opinions. I guess the bottom line is that Ryan could be effectively used by a group of people wanting to launch a new project from the ashes of the old one. Whether or not it hired Ryan, or involved him at all, once up and running is a different matter.
OK, back to point a: I don’t honestly know how much demand there is for an amateur radio station. The last one did sound pretty amateurish at times and that puts people off. There needs to be more clarity about what the mission of the station would be and how to achieve it.
b - technical stuff:
c - there’s an entire studio sitting in someone’s store room, and possibly there are rooms available to re-install it into. There are also a lot of people who are owed fair amounts of money. To set this up would require investment capital. And regardless of how much free time people have to put into this there is still the question of how you deliver the content to the audience. Are there no bandwidth (ie money) issues? I assume there are.
Finally, something like this would need a full-time manager who would need to be compensated for the money he/she is not earning elsewhere. It needs someone dedicated to making this happen, and that person needs admin support. The current debacle is evidence of what happens when a project is not properly managed. (And no, I’m definitely not suitable, or interested.)
A lot of us would like to see a new service flourish, but it ain’t going to happen without money, a clearly-defined mission, a business plan, and the right people to carry it through.
All those volunteering take one pace forward!
The problem with foreigner radio in Taiwan and this seems to elude most people is that it takes lots of money if you are going to do anything meaningful. It is not, not, not a matter of buying some c.ds and deciding what the play list is going to be.
Foreign radio for Taiwan has nothing to do with music. If I want tunes there are thousand of internet radio stations and I will tune in to exactly what I am in the mood to hear. I do not need for the d.j. or the streamcaster to be physically here in Taiwan. Or if I am some Thai construction guy, I got my c.d. player and batch of c.ds from Thailand. In either event I do not need Foreigner Radio in Taiwan for tunes.
Foreign radio in Taiwan is about news and advocacy; not music. What people need is reliable english language news that is not dumbed downed or simply some guy reading yesterdays China Post or the shit cranked out by the GIO. Alongside that Foreign Radio in Taiwan needs to have a role advocating certain positions on behalf of foreigners living in Taiwan. (i.e. an editorial role). And alongside that Foreign Radio in Taiwan should have local interest features (what bands are at what clubs, when the Air Raid drills are going to close the city-for example right this minute as I am typing this as opposed to going out to take care of business!).
Now to the problem of problems; all the above cost money. News reporting, advocacy and putting together good feature segments is NOT something that can be done on a volunteer basis. Even if you happened to get a set of volunteers together who would for example commit to doing same day translations or doing volunteer reporting they are going to grow weary of that after about a week.
So therein lies your problem. And I do not see any solution.
IMO, the benefit of the doubt is relinquished when the whole foundation of your business is a lie. He claimed that a spot on the FM dial was imminent. He even had the imaginary number on the WWRN website. The reason he was in over his head so badly was that it was ALL bullshit. The advertisers he conned, the people who worked for him (or, more correctly, volunteered for him) all believed that they were dealing with an FM station. All the other bullshit he spewed was incidental. Not benign, but secondary in relation to the core one.
If Ryan had been honest from the word go, and it failed, I suspect people would be more willing to forgive the check is in the mail story. As it is, he abused people’s trust and did so knowingly. I know. I’ve been a victim of his bullshit myself. And when I went to the studio to collect money (or try to) I found that there are several others in Taipei in the same boat.
I think that Michel was right about the pathological liar angle. In this case, these lies were told, in part, to try and make up for other past scams. And as inevitably happens, instead of getting himself out of trouble, he just got into more. Clearly it was more than he could handle.
But Loretta, you’re right. The people who lost money due to their trust in Ryan can always make more. For me, it served as a wake up call. It may even have prevented me from getting a worse shaft down the road. Other than Ryan, in my little world, the only real loser is the next honest guy who may need financial help from me.
Absolutely. Spot. On.
[quote=“brianlkennedy”]
Now to the problem of problems; all the above cost money. News reporting, advocacy and putting together good feature segments is NOT something that can be done on a volunteer basis. Even if you happened to get a set of volunteers together who would for example commit to doing same day translations or doing volunteer reporting they are going to grow weary of that after about a week.
So therein lies your problem. And I do not see any solution.[/quote]
I tend to agree with Brian. Quality original content is expensive to produce. I think this would be especially true for radio.
A newspaper might work if it concentrated on special ‘foreigner’ issues (like the ones Brian just suggested) and also could beat the Taipei Times and other folks in getting stories out.
I took a quick look at the lead Taiwan stories in the Taipei Times over the past couple days. Almost all of the stories could have been written from Chinese media sources without actually covering the events in question. And why should we have to wait until the next day to read these stories? Actually Forumosa already breaks a lot of these stories first as alert posters showed last night on this thread and Wolf showed a few days ago with the Rick Chu story.
A couple of key people could get something like this out every day and it could be supplemented with original material from outside writers–who would need to be paid of course.
My point is that producing the equivalent of what the Taipei Times does now could be done online for a tiny, tiny fraction of what it costs the TT to do it.
Moderator-do you want to split this to a new thread called The Formosa Times?
excellent post brianlkennedy. i hope the money can be found to do it. maybe some foriegn sponsor guy with vision.
I have a collection of listener numbers compiled from server statistics from WWRN. They seem to match the numbers I have seen on computer screens at the studio.
My question is: how reliable are those numbers? Can the software be told to misrepresent the situation or are these figures probably real?
I agree with that above, but I also like radio as a souce of music. It’s not that easy in Taiwan to stay plugged in. I think the idea of a podcast would work well on Forumosa. There is no need for fulltime radio programming, however some recordered programs could be fun. For example, if you are a dj and can put together a combination of music that can be downloaded as a podcast that would be definitely something I’d be into. The same is true for advocacy and talkback. You don’t need to have a fulltime studio.
We can have:
Quiet Moments with The Sandman
Law and Order- The Kennedy File
Torn Apart- By Tigerman
In Bed with Fred
The Three bob Jobs
I Can’t Get No Satisfaction- 914 and the Erhus
Breakdown: MBJ
Break up: rantheman
My Brilliant Career- Jdsmith and Durnis Bane
Lockdown with Comrade Starlin
Hair: Loretta
Zip It- Tetsuo
The Untouchables: Maoman and Goose Egg
Wake Up! with Spook
Mind Games: RichardM
A Voice of Reason with Hobbes and Jaboney
In Your Face: IP Forum Live
In Your Pants: Chewycorns
Actually I think Fox has hit gold. Before trying to get a whole radio station going, a good baby step would be podcasting - that involves substantially less cost to the “DJ’s”, there’s little in the way of overhead, MP3 players are pretty much a given here, and if we could get them listed on iTunes’ podcast directory, we could very well be golden. We could organize programs basically like a radio station, although they’d be shorter most likely, and anyone who wants to join in would just need to look up the requirements (which we could have listed on a page on the website) and jump in. There could be a daily or weekly (or both) news (half-)hour, political analysis, current events, advocacy, all kinds of music (there’s a lot of podsafe music out there, and the really keen could even try and get a licensing agreement, if possible here), gig guides, all sorts of thing.
The more I think about this, the better the Voice of Formosa Podcasts idea sounds.