By Fred Sowder, WGOT Station Manager
It’s been a banner year for your community radio station.
2018 has seen the creation of our studio within the Civic Media Center; a blowout 10th anniversary celebration featuring Radon, Whiskey & Co. and others at The Atlantic; and the lecture by Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman in Gainesville in association with the CMC’s 25th anniversary celebration.
We’ve also had continued partnerships with The Fest, Daily Green, Sweetwater Organic Coffee Company, and other great sponsors.
But we’re not stopping there.
Our next mission is to begin streaming again worldwide to overcome reception problems from having only a 100-watt signal originating from the area of Santa Fe College. The biggest obstacles to that right now are funds needed to cover over a 100 percent increase in our annual performance rights fees, as well as the implementation of reporting technology since we’ll need to submit our entire playlist of songs along with the number of people streaming at any given time on a quarterly basis.
Fundraising is the relatively easy part of this and we’re requesting your assistance. Our GoFundMe page (goo.gl/Rtwii1) still continues to fundraise for this important project, and it’s just over $2,000 away from reaching its goal.
Perhaps more importantly, you can become a sustaining member of WGOT’s mission by becoming a patron here: goo.gl/ZBjYxc. Becoming a monthly sustainer will get you bonus episodes of many of your favorite WGOT programs as well as other cool swag TBA. And since WGOT is a part of the Civic Media Center, your donations are fully tax deductible.
We’re also in the process of applying for a local grant to assist us in this endeavor and anyone with grant writing experience would also be a large asset. Those with technical expertise willing to volunteer their services to accomplish the latter goal would also provide an invaluable contribution.
In addition, WGOT seeks to increase its live programming originating from the Civic Media Center.
Doug Clifford and I recently had a successful live hour of local midterm election coverage in between the Democracy Now!/The Intercept national election night rundown.
We’ve had several orientation and training sessions and look forward to having more of those in the new year. We encourage all of our attendees to continue using the studio, especially to practice and hone your delivery and production skills. That’s why it’s there. Increasing the number of locally-based programs on our schedule is really important to us.
We also have open board and scheduling volunteer positions to fill if you’re interested in being a part of WGOT’s day-to-day operations.
Thank you for helping in whatever capacity you can to help your station grow. Stay tuned to 100.1 FM and like us on Facebook for upcoming details about WGOT’s 11th anniversary show coming to The Atlantic in January!
If you missed it, Amy Goodman’s speech at the Civic Media Center’s 25th Anniversary celebration can be found here: goo.gl/S78wGD.