And that will do it for today's newscast. You've been listening to Free Speech Radio
News, which is supported by Pacifica Radio, community radio affiliate stations, and listener
supporters. Our newscast is produced by Catherine Komp and Vinod K. Joes. Our Washington, D.C.
editor is Leanne Caldwell. Our headlines editor is Jess Burns. Our tech team at KPFA in Berkeley
includes Puck Lowe, Rose Kitapchi, and Oscar Hernandez. In Cairo, I'm Eyal Batrawi, sitting
in for Aura Bogado.
And you're listening to radio station WBAI-New York, where the time is 7.01. Time once again
for Off The Hook.
I hope that's understood. Bundle it up!
Good evening to everybody. The program is Off The Hook. Emmanuel Goldstein here with
you on this Wednesday evening, joined tonight by Voltaire, Rob T. Firefly. Good evening.
Dot Rhett. Howdy. Mike. Hi. Bernie down in Philadelphia. Greetings from Philadelphia.
I'm sorry, say that again, but say it louder. Greetings from Philadelphia. That's better.
Red Hacked is in the other room. Actually, he's involved in an ambush right now. And
Not Kevin is down in Talley Room, because this is the third of our fundraising shows.
I'm not sure if it's the last one. I've heard rumors it might be the last one, which would
be great, assuming we raise all the money we need to. But I'll tell you, you know, we
need to raise more tonight than we raised last week. Thanks to everybody who called
in and pledged last week, but we need to raise more than we did, because we didn't do as
well as we should have. Not blaming anybody. Not saying that people didn't do enough, except
they didn't. Not enough people did. The people who pledged. The people who pledged did fine.
We thank them. But the people who didn't pledge, we want to thank them this week. Pledge this
week. Yes. And if you're able to pledge more than once, that's great, because we do offer
multiple things. Every week we offer something different. This week is no exception. We have
something completely different this week, and we think that you'll like that.
We have a different premium, but we have one thing which remains the same, which is that
you keep the station and this program on the air.
Yeah, that's right. You keep the station. Let's get through our own personal lives quickly.
Bernie, you were down in Dayton, I believe, this weekend?
Yes. I don't know if I was down in Dayton, but I was in the Midwest of Dayton, Ohio.
So you were having a good time in Dayton, then, is what you're trying to say.
Yes. I was not down. I was up in Dayton. And for listeners who aren't familiar with the
Dayton ambition, it was about 20,000 communications geeks, with radio communications, internet
communications, telephone communications, a lot of networking people, ham radio people,
and phone freaks in one place. And it's a massive flea market of people that want to
unload the collections of private gear they've had over the years, and it's just a great
place to walk around and have camaraderie with people of like minds. And it's amazing
how many 2600 readers and off-the-hook listeners there are there. I ran into several who I
didn't know and somehow knew me.
And I regret that I did not make it this year, and that the 2600 van was not in attendance.
But I felt it in spirit, and in fact, I even drove the 2600 van this weekend and said,
boy, you know, I could have driven a thousand miles this weekend, but I didn't. But, you know,
I missed it. I really did. And hopefully next year I'll be there.
Okay. We'll hold you to it.
Well, don't hold me to it. I don't know for sure, but we'll certainly try.
Yeah, so we have other updates, other things that have been going on. Redhacked has arrived
in the studio. Welcome.
Yeah. Sorry.
That's okay. How's the ambush going?
Ambush probably failing, but I have some...
Well, it's failing if you're in here.
Well, I have information that could prove of use.
Okay. Good information. It's good when you get involved in the skullduggery on the air.
I like that. Okay. Let's get down to business. We have something interesting this week that
we've never offered before. We've had videos that we've offered from the Hope conferences,
and they have done fantastically. People have fought to pledge for those. We have something
completely different this week. We have videos from a different conference. And in fact,
we sort of have an Ohio theme tonight. Bernie just got back from Dayton, Ohio. Last month,
a bunch of us, Rob T. Firefly, Bernie, myself, went to a conference called Notacon. It was
my second time. Bernie, I believe your second time as well. Rob, your first time.
Indeed.
It was great. It's one of the many hacker conferences that take place around the world
during an annual period. This is in Cleveland, Ohio. It's a bit smaller than the Hope conferences,
but I think that makes it all the more interesting, and that makes it more intimate. You get to
actually talk to people and recognize people that you've just met and make it to a good
many talks. What we have tonight for a pledge of $75 is a 12-DVD pack of the best of Notacon
2009, and this is courtesy of the folks over at Notacon and our good friend Ted, who videotapes
all these hacker conferences, including our own. So you know the video quality is going
to be just great. So for a pledge of $75, 212-209-2950, you'll get that, and you'll
also get an off-the-hook t-shirt. So I think that's a pretty good deal.
And WBAI.
And you get WBAI. What more could you ask for?
You have to pledge how much for that?
$75. For 12 DVDs.
For 12 DVDs, that's not a lot per DVD.
No, not at all. Considering what's on the DVDs, it's really a good deal. I'm going to
play an excerpt from one of the talks. This is called Hacking Cognition. It's All in Your
Mind. And I believe this particular section here, the person giving the talk, Tottenkopf
is the name, is discussing various smart drugs and what they do. Let's take a listen.
Now we're talking about smart drugs. We will go over the more popular smart drugs for some
of the cognitive functions mentioned earlier. The asterisk after a drug name means that
it is legal to use these substances in the U.S., but you can't get them without a prescription
within the U.S. You can get them in Mexico and Switzerland.
All right, we'll start with memory. The drug is hydrogene. Too large of a dose can cause
nausea, gastric disturbance or headache. Overall, hydrogene does not produce any serious side
effects. It's non-toxic even if you exceed the recommended dose. And it is contraindicated
only for individuals who have chronic or acute psychosis. So if you're crazy, don't take
hydrogene. The U.S. recommended dosage is three milligrams a day. However, the European
recommended dosage is nine milligrams a day taken in three individual doses. It may take
several weeks or even months before hydrogene produces noticeable effects. And hydrogene,
but not its generic counterparts, is available in a sublingual form, and there's evidence
that sublingual doses reach the brain in greater quantity.
For learning and comprehension, there's DMAE. I can't pronounce that long word, but it's
DMAE. Studies in which participants took high doses of DMAE haven't revealed any harmful
side effects, although one study published in 1979 linked DMAE with depression and moderate
symptoms of mania. Dosages haven't been looked into too much, but pills are usually sold
in 125 milligram tablets. It's a precursor of choline and an antioxidant that is found
naturally in the brain. And most people who use DMAE supplements report that after three
to four weeks of using it, they have a continual mild stimulation of their CNS without side
effects. CNS being your central nervous system, in case you didn't know that.
For attention and concentration, there's paracetam. It can increase the effects of certain drugs,
such as amphetamines and psychotropics. Adverse effects are rare, but include insomnia, psychomotor
agitation, nausea, headaches, and an upset stomach. It's supplied in 400 or 800 milligram
tablets. Usual dose is 2400 to 48 milligrams a day in three doses. When some people first
take paracetam, they do not notice any effect until they take a higher dose. After that,
they notice that a lower dose is just fine enough, and the drug takes effect in about
half an hour to an hour.
Okay, that was just a little bit of not a con there. What do you guys think of that?
Dot Red, I know you're a big brain person. What do you think of all this smart drug stuff?
I'm usually less interested in chemical manipulation, more into audio, visual, and social things.
So I don't have much to say about that, unfortunately.
I think it's pretty exciting. I've always been interested in smart drugs.
Yeah, well, I mean, this was an interesting lecture having to do with all kinds of cognitive
things going on in your mind. It kind of goes to show how it's not just limited to computers,
to ones and zeros and things like that. When you go to a hacker conference, you'll see
all kinds of different subject matter being covered.
And that's true, because hacking is more than just computers, and our brain is an electrochemical
machine, and drugs are chemicals. Therefore, you are playing around with the other forms
of input that go into your brain.
And you need to be educated on this. That's a very important part of the whole thing.
But I just think it's fascinating how people, when they're doing these talks, these lectures,
they just seem to know so much, and they come from all over the place.
I mean, Rob, you were at the conference. Were you impressed by the diversity?
I was very impressed by the diversity. I mean, there were things like we just heard.
There were other things. It seemed to cover such a wide spectrum where, you know,
no matter where you were, no matter where your positions are on certain things,
you could find something to do pretty much at any point during the con.
Yeah, and if you were at the con and you weren't able to make it to all the lectures like me,
well, then you can hear them now. You can hear the best of 12 DVDs, 12 DVDs of Nauticon,
which took place last month in Cleveland. That's for a pledge of $75, 212-209-2950.
So you get not only to hear but also to see these talks, right?
Yeah, yeah, because that's how DVDs work.
And the best part of all is you don't have to go to Cleveland.
Well, okay, let's not diss Cleveland too badly. But yeah, that is true.
Unless you're already in Cleveland, you can see these in the comfort of your own home
and learn everything there is to learn about these various subject matter things that were discussed.
Now, here's another clip that I'd like to focus on for a second.
This was an interesting one. This was particularly interesting to me.
It's called The Long Slow Death of Mainstream Media, How We Got Here.
So it's 180 degrees different than what we just heard.
But this is another excerpt from a DVD that you will get as part of a 12 DVD set.
When you call 212-209-2950 and offer your support to this radio station, $75 pledge,
you'll get the 12 DVD set, you'll get the off-the-hook t-shirt.
And let me just add in one more level that we have. We have a 125 level.
If you're interested in that, that will get you the 12 DVD set
and a full set of all the off-the-hooks ever recorded on more DVDs,
one DVD per year, and in full broadcast quality sound,
unlike what you will hear online on the website.
That's for a pledge of 125.
If you were to go out and purchase that on our own website,
yeah, this is what hurts us so much.
Because if you went and you bought it from us, you'd pay more than that.
You would pay more than that.
So not only are we giving this away to the radio station,
but we're giving it away and you guys are getting it for free.
We're competing with ourselves, it seems.
But that's what you have to do.
$125 for the Nauticon 12 DVD pack plus the off-the-hook DVD pack.
The silver in the DVDs alone has got to be worth it.
It's their silver.
Three calls on the line, 212-209-2950.
Remember, the important thing is the radio station,
keeping the radio station going.
That's what it's all about.
That's really the primary reason to call.
Sure, you might be able to figure out a way to get better deals,
even if that was possible in this case, which it's not.
The important thing is that your money goes towards keeping this frequency
non-commercial and keeping alternative programming coming your way
on 99.5 FM in the middle of New York City.
And that, my friends, that is an accomplishment,
having that frequency in New York City,
something that you could never, ever accomplish today.
We were able to get the frequency back in 1960 through a donation,
the biggest donation of all, the radio station itself,
the frequency itself donated to the Pacifica Foundation.
And ever since then, almost 50 years, 50 years next year,
we have survived on your support and listeners just like you.
Walter?
What premium did that person get for donating the radio station?
Yeah, it didn't quite work that way.
We didn't have the radio station yet, so we didn't have premiums set up.
The premium they got, which is the same premium our listeners get,
is the radio station itself, the programming on the station.
Except he already had the radio station he donated to us.
But he only got commercial.
It was probably a lot more boring when he had it.
Well, he's probably kicking himself.
I don't think he's alive anymore.
Yeah, but the thing is, it shows you the spirit of people
who realize the importance of noncommercial radio,
where if you have something huge, something really, really big,
and you give that away, you give that to something you believe in,
that shows where your heart is.
Now, we're not asking you to donate a radio station.
If you have one, that would be great.
But whatever you can afford.
If you're a millionaire, you can obviously afford more than most of us.
But please, give a call now.
212-209-2950.
I think we can get one more phone call to come in
before we go to the next excerpt from the Natacon DVDs.
Again, three basic levels, although any amount is accepted,
and we have all kinds of other premiums that WBAI offers.
For a $25 pledge, you'll get a special off-the-hook T-shirt
that you can only get by donating to the radio station.
I see these all the time. People wear them.
They stand out.
They stand out because they realize that they're donating to the radio station.
Other people realize this.
People say, hey, what's off-the-hook? Tell me all about that.
It basically says the name of the show and when it's on on the back of the shirt.
Yeah, it's all the information you need in case you ever forget when it's on.
212-209-2950.
That's for a pledge of $25.
Now, keep in mind, everybody who pledges $25 and above gets the shirt.
So if you pledge $75, you'll get the 12-DVD set for Natacan.
Yeah, 12 DVDs, highlights of Natacan, the Hacker Conference from Cleveland in April 2009.
And you'll also get the T-shirt.
$75 pledge.
$125, you'll get the 12-DVD set of Natacan, you'll get the T-shirt,
and you'll get every single edition of Off-the-Hook from 1988 to the end of 2008.
And that's a lot of shows.
We had a guy on a few weeks ago that was able to come up with a graphic novel series
that was inspired by listening to all of these radio shows.
So who knows what you're listening to all these radio shows will inspire you to do.
It's hopefully something good and not something destructive.
But whatever it is, it'll be something that we'll be proud of.
We promise.
212-209-2950.
Good.
We got three calls on the line.
That's great to see.
Good response.
Let's play another excerpt from Natacan.
This, as mentioned, the long, slow death of mainstream media by Drew Curtis.
And let's hear some of his perspective.
What's next for mainstream media?
Nobody's actually talking about that because nobody really wants to conceive
of the fact that there may be a future without a lot of mid-market dailies running around.
I have a feeling that as far as media consolidation goes,
you're going to see two or three national players pop out.
It's going to be Fox.
It's going to be CNN.
It's going to be the AP in some form.
The AP has been trying to cannibalize traffic to themselves off of their partner sites
for a long time now.
And then after that, I'm not 100 percent sure who else is going to be left standing
at the national level.
What, however, is going to happen at the mid-market and local level is fairly interesting.
About three weeks ago, I got invited out to the Poynter Institute to talk about
ostensibly the impact of Web 2.0 on democracy or some really vague topic like that.
But all anybody wanted to talk about was why media was going to be dying.
And there were a couple of interesting talks that were given there.
One in particular was by a guy who runs the Chi-Town Daily News.
I don't know if anybody here is from Chicago or not.
But if you are, you may have heard of these guys.
They get some reasonable press occasionally.
And what these guys have done is very interesting.
They set up with about a $400,000 initial investment.
They hired five investigative reporters who put together essentially a blog
and do nothing but show up at local council meetings or school board meetings
or planning and zoning or all that boring crap that when the media started cutting guys,
that's who they fired first because nobody reads this crap.
And they send them out there to cover that stuff.
Because as it turns out, you don't need this massive infrastructure to do journalism.
You just need a journalist in some place to put this stuff later when he brings it back to you.
And what they've done is they've also done this interestingly in a non-profit format.
Now, there's two interesting ramifications.
The first one is that the guy who runs it anticipates that for about $1 to $2 million,
you could probably reconstruct the journalistic effectiveness equivalent of any mid-market daily
in the entire United States, period.
With about $2 million, and that would be enough to set them up, hire the guys, get it going,
and then exist on an ongoing basis.
And I expect we're going to see a lot of that in the near future.
However, what he does say is that after their experience of setting this up as a non-profit,
that he says that's absolutely not the way to do it, as it turns out.
And there's a couple reasons for that.
Part of it is because of non-profit restrictions.
Another problem is that going out and getting donations.
He says the pool of available charity money for non-profit anything is not particularly large.
And currently, there is no pool of money in existence for media as a donation in order to keep them going.
Now, NPR does pretty good, but they don't receive, like, they're doing their little fundraisers and whatnot.
They're actually not attempting to contact massive donors and get these massive amount of grants
and to continue to function.
Basically, he says that it's essentially a non-starter for one of the things that mainstream media has sort of attempted to do here recently,
which was, I don't know if you guys caught, about a month and a half ago,
where somebody in Congress attempted to file a bill to make it easier for existing news properties to convert to non-profit status.
Now, that happened while I was out at this conference,
and the guy basically read the entire bill, and he said,
this is absolutely not going to do what they think it will do.
And he was thinking that the reason that the news media is so excited about this non-profit status for themselves
is that they are confusing non-profit status with not making any money.
It's not the same thing.
Non-profits still need to make money in order to be able to operate.
Non-profit has just got to, makes it a little bit easier to exist and basically do stuff
in kind of a little bit of a vacuum without all of the problems you've got running ads against your content.
But if you're actually not making any money, and you're losing it like crazy,
converting to non-profit status is of no use whatsoever, and it'll probably just make you die faster.
Now, Chi-Town Daily News had some interesting ideas,
and I actually expect to see this happen kind of organically in other markets across the United States.
In particular, I think the first place we're going to see this happen,
and this is just a complete guess on my part, by the way, but I bet we're going to see it,
is I think the Rocky Mountain News is going to come back in some form or another.
Again, one or two million dollars, hire the five or ten best journalists,
who still live in the area, by the way, and wouldn't mind being employed again.
Buy the domain name, get some air on chairs, a little office space, off you go.
You've got the Rocky Mountain News again, and it will actually operate about as well
as the original Rocky Mountain News did, and all you've got to do to compensate for the stuff you don't have
is buy a bunch of wire service articles, fill in your extra space, off you go.
And you can make, not killer money at it, but you can do pretty good.
And I expect you're going to see a bunch of guys pop up, and in particular,
the model for success that I am seeing pop up is happening at the super local level.
I think everybody who lives in a reasonably sized city has a super local.
In Lexington, where we live, there's a number of them actually, owned by the same guy.
It started out as a paper called the Chevy Chaser, which was about one local newspaper,
little neighborhood, but expanded to cover eventually south Lexington,
and then eventually the entire city, and now he's got a local business one going,
and a bunch of other stuff, and this guy's making a lot of money.
And what he did was, he's not all online, he's doing print, but what he did was,
he built this thing from the ground up.
Rather than having 150 years of legacy, whatever, that he had to support,
on top of 30 years of being a monopoly, and basically funding people not doing anything all day long,
he didn't have a lot of money to do this, and so he hired one or two guys,
started doing a good job, put out good content, got his paper going, got his ad going,
built that up very slowly over time, and now what this guy's doing,
and I expect this is going in other markets as well,
he is poaching every single good writer locally that he's ever wanted to have.
He can get all of them, as it turns out.
Even if the newspaper hasn't gone bankrupt yet,
everybody in journalism still feels like they're about to lose their jobs.
So if you come along and you say, hey, you're probably about to lose your job, would you like one?
It jumps ship all day long.
So he's looting his local newspaper for all of the talent,
so by the time these guys go under, all of the actual good investigative journalists
that we're all worried about losing are going to be signed on somewhere else
by the time that thing goes kapoof.
Okay, and that was an excerpt from Natakhan,
basically all about the death of mainstream media.
The long, slow death of mainstream media is the actual name of the talk by Drew Curtis.
Drew Curtis runs the website FARC.com.
Are you guys familiar with that?
Indeed. FARC is a lot of fun, actually.
Yeah.
So it's an interesting talk about how mainstream media is dying.
And, you know, we're not really mainstream media.
Yeah, we're part of the old system of radio, but we also are on the Internet.
We have podcasts and things like that.
So I think we're the ones that are going to survive, whereas the real mainstream media,
they're the ones that either have to change or die gracefully.
And that's why they would even be dying in the first place
because they're not necessarily embracing the new technologies that make the old ones obsolete.
Absolutely.
202-209-2950 is our phone number.
We had a couple of calls during that excerpt.
What we're offering tonight are 12 DVDs of similar type talks from the Hacker Convention in Cleveland.
It took place in April from Natakhan.
Twelve DVDs of various sorts where you'll learn all kinds of things,
like the long, slow death of mainstream media,
but also some technical computer issues as well and phone things
and all kinds of things that you'd see at a hacker convention.
It's great to see different conventions, not just the HOPE conventions, but other ones as well.
So if you pledge $75, you'll get the 12 DVD set,
which will give you a good taste of what that's all about.
Again, you also get the Off the Hook T-shirt,
which everybody 25 and above, not in years, but everybody who pledges 25 and above,
no matter what your age, will get.
We're calling 202-209-2950.
And for $125, you'll get all 12 of the Natakhan DVDs.
You'll get the Off the Hook T-shirt,
and you'll get every single edition of Off the Hook in full stereo sound,
much better sound quality than exists on the Internet.
You'll get that from 1988 to the end of 2008, every single show on DVD.
That's for a pledge of $125.
You get that, 12 Natakhan DVDs, and the Off the Hook T-shirt.
It's a great deal, it really is, but it's only being offered for this hour.
212-209-2950.
We have one call on the line now.
Mike, you were just down in Talley. How many people are down there?
There's a few people down there, and they're always interested to talk to you.
Yeah, so if we have, say, another four or five calls come in,
it'll cause quite a stir down there, won't it?
Yeah, they'd be very excited.
They would be very excited, jumping over the table to get to the phone.
It's just fun to see the pandemonium.
It's lighting up their day.
They're playing the guitar, which is nice.
What do you mean they're playing the guitar?
I don't know. There's a guitar in there, and they were playing it, and that's nice, of course.
But they'd much rather be answering the phone.
Yeah, well, I'd much rather be answering the phone, too.
I mean, I'm not against music or anything like that, but this is a fundraiser.
It's an important thing.
And, yeah, let's play music afterwards.
Let's do all kinds of... Is that what I think it is right now?
No.
Oh, okay.
All right, well, it's something.
212-209-2950.
Is that a gong for, like, kicking us out of here if we don't raise more money?
I didn't want to do this, but we do need to get those phone lines ringing
because, basically, the station is in trouble, as most things are in the economy today,
but nonprofits like us in particular are in trouble because, well, things have gotten so expensive
and the recession has hit so many people.
Our rent stays the same.
The transmitter bill stays the same.
But, basically, what we just heard as far as mainstream media,
a lot of people start listening to different kinds of media, which is great,
but they might start taking us for granted.
And if they do that, that's a big mistake because, all of a sudden,
something might happen that kind of happened on the air here.
Now, I know what you're about to do. Is there any way we can stop it?
Well, there's no way you can stop me from doing it,
but there is a way you can stop it from happening.
Let me go into some detail here.
We were on the air on April 1st, and that doesn't happen very often,
but when it does happen, of course, we always try to do something special.
And this particular time, yes, Fred?
Wouldn't it happen, like, about once every seven years or so?
Yeah.
So we try to do something special about once every seven years when April 1st comes around.
And in this particular time, we thought it would be fun to sort of ask what would happen
if WBAI really was taken over, if something horrible were to happen.
And this is not something that's a remote possibility, folks.
This is something that is a very real possibility because of today's economy.
It makes it all the more like, look around you.
Look at all the places that have gone out of business.
And there's a reason for that because they can't afford to keep it going.
And they can't afford to keep it going because people aren't making enough money
and they're not able to spend as much.
And that extends to donations as well.
Lots of times, donations to your favorite organizations are the first thing to get cut.
So that definitely has a very grave effect on us here at WBAI.
So we were sort of pondering what would it sound like?
What would WBAI's last broadcast sound like?
And we just put this on the air.
I don't want to hear this.
No, nobody wants to hear this.
I don't want to hear this.
But we have to hear this because this is reality.
What would it sound like to sign off for the last time?
It's very sad, a very sad type of feeling.
And then what would happen to the frequency?
So what we're going to play now, and I urge people not to panic,
but just get near your phone because you can prevent this from happening.
You can stop this from happening by calling 212-209-2950,
pledging whatever you can afford.
You're going to hear the end of WBAI
and the beginning of what takes over on 99.5 FM.
And this is a very real possibility.
Please say it's a possibility.
Like I said on that night, these are the things that may happen,
not the things that will happen.
I was channeling Charles Dickens there.
Okay, we have two people already mortified enough to call in.
212-209-2950, that's good to see.
And hopefully those phone lines will light up like a real Christmas tree
and we'll get all kinds of donations and do very well tonight
because it's essential.
It's imperative.
Now what we're going to do is you're going to hear two voices actually
as WBAI leaves the air for the last time.
And it's funny because these two voices are not human.
Everyone thinks they're human,
but I was able to find this voice synthesizer.
I'm sorry.
Text-to-speech.
Yeah, but the voices just sounded really human.
And there's a woman on there who sounds like somebody on the air here.
And then there's a man, and I swear the way he says his sentence,
it sounds like he's crying, sounds like he's about to cry,
exactly how somebody would sound on the day of WBAI's last broadcast.
So these two computerized voices as we sign off are quite realistic.
And then stay tuned to hear what very well could replace us.
212-209-2950.
♪♪♪
WBAI, New York.
Serving the community since 1960.
How long shall they kill our prophets
While we stand aside and look
Yes, some say it's just a part of it
We've got to fulfill the book
Won't you help to sing
These songs of freedom
It's all I ever have
Redemption songs
All I ever have
Redemption songs
These songs of freedom
Songs of freedom
♪♪♪
♪♪♪
T-minus 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
It's here.
Welcome, welcome to the new Country 99.5.
It's nothing but good music.
Country music is back on in New York City.
I'm Kenny Chesney.
Hi, this is Shania Twain.
Hey, y'all, I'm Kix Bruce.
I'm Rodney Dunne.
And we're Bruce and Dunne.
New York's newest radio station.
Country 99.5.
So much fun.
Woo!
And now, 10,000 country hits commercial free.
Country 99.5.
Country 99.5.
♪♪♪
Her daddy gave her her first home.
Okay, we're not going to subject you to that all over again.
I'm sorry.
Yeah, that is thanks to our good friend Laszlo,
who has all kinds of good connections in commercial radio.
These are the folks who actually do this kind of thing.
We played this.
It went on for a good 20 minutes.
And can you imagine, the biggest nightmare of all,
10,000 nonstop country hits on 99.5 FM.
It got the phone lines lit up.
Are they lighting up again?
The listener lines are lighting up.
They did, but then they stopped.
Okay, we want the pledge lines to light up so you can prevent that from happening,
from ever happening.
212-209-2950.
Pledge whatever you can afford because every single vote counts.
Every single person calling in will help keep 99.5 FM from ever turning into a country music station.
Or worse.
Or worse.
And there is worse.
They have a great location in the middle of the FM dot.
Yeah, they would go for this.
I could ride around in my SUV.
Like flies on.
Well, yeah.
Can we say if we get a certain amount of pledges, you'll make it stop?
Because I can still hear it.
Yeah, it's going to stay there for a while.
We're going to cut away when they do a break.
But we have two calls on the line, which is great.
We have three pledge levels for our show.
25, 75, and 125.
You get the Off The Hook t-shirt on all the levels.
You'll get the 12 DVD set of Notacon panels for 75.
You'll get the Notacon panels, the shirt, and every edition of Off The Hook from 1988 to 2008 on a whole bunch of other DVDs.
125, 212, 209, 2950.
We have two calls on the line.
Let's make that four.
Show your support for non-country music on 99.5 FM.
Not to say that if you like country music, you shouldn't play.
I've got nothing against country music.
I've got nothing against most of the things on the radio.
It's just they should stay in their particular location, and we should keep our location because this is precious.
This is something worth preserving.
Rob?
Yeah, I appreciate country music's existence in the world.
It's just not instead of us.
Yeah, not instead of us.
There's been talk of the New York Times relinquishing WQXR, which is a commercial station at 96.3.
Oh, this is a good part of the song.
And they play classical music.
They've been on the air forever, but because of the economy, they might have to sell that station.
And right away, right away, there's reports that ESPN wants that frequency for a sports station.
Can you imagine that?
Sports replacing classical music in the city.
I thought sports was usually relegated to AM.
Yeah, but they want FM now.
They're not on FM.
They want FM.
What are you clear sports radio for?
Yeah, clear broadcast of games and all kinds of things like that.
So, you better believe any FM frequency in this city is valuable.
And there are people lining up to take this one away from us.
If we mess up and don't make enough money and don't pay our bills.
212-209-2950.
Let's hear a break here.
Is this the future?
It's up to you.
212-209-2950.
In with the new country hits.
From Nashville to New York.
Country 99.5.
Where you're in the middle of a 10,000 song marathon.
Keith Urban.
Country 99.5.
Oh yeah.
You laugh now.
You laugh now, but you won't be laughing so hard when the frequency is lost and we wind up with something like this.
We don't have a country music station in the city.
We don't.
We want to stupid HD tube things, but not actually on the FM frequency.
I'm going to turn him down a little bit.
Not actually on the frequency itself.
Rob.
Yeah, 10,000 country hits.
I don't know if there are 10,000 country hits.
I did the calculations.
It would take about three weeks straight to do this.
So, it's not actually that inconceivable that they would do something like that.
That's what commercial stations do.
When they start a new station, they have 10,000 songs in a row.
And yes, there are 10,000 different country hits that you could play.
Well, different may be overstating.
Again, I don't want to discount your music too badly because there are some country songs I actually like.
10,000 though?
I think it's wrong to say an entire musical genre is bad.
I don't think that's true at all.
There's that one song about women, I think, is the subject.
There are, yeah, some misogynistic things and things like that.
But the point is, this place, the place we have right now at 99.5 FM, is that worth preserving to you?
If so, please give a call now, 212-209-2950.
Yeah, and just to remind our listeners, what you're hearing is sort of a goof on commercial radio.
But it's not what we do.
We don't have commercials.
What you're hearing now are our pledging, our pledge periods, our fundraising.
This is it.
This is what keeps the station going.
Yeah, absolutely.
Okay.
And it's really a difficult business model because some of the NPR stations, they take corporate funding.
They don't call them commercials.
But you'll hear that this program was brought to you by some giant corporation.
And the commercial radio obviously has commercials.
WBAI and Pacifica are unique in that the only source of our funding is you, the listener.
So if you want us to stay on the air, you need to tell us that by calling us, 212-209-2950,
and pledging your support and saying, I want to keep WBAI on the air.
I want to keep Off the Hook on the air.
It's the only way that that can happen.
Yeah, just because the station's been here since the 60s doesn't mean it has to stay here.
That's right.
Things do change.
Institutions that you believe will be there forever vanish.
They disappear.
You see all the chain stores going out of business.
You see things that Chrysler shutting down, all the showrooms,
and all these people who had jobs for generations now out in the street.
We're no different.
The same thing could happen to us.
This frequency could turn country tomorrow if we lost the battle to pay the bills and keep things going.
You can make a big difference, 212-209-2950.
Again, we're offering those three premium levels.
MedHack actually has been out helping to get the list of names from the last couple of fundraisers,
so we are on top of that situation.
If you're somebody who pledged in the past, believe me, we are aware of that,
and we are going to send everybody everything that they pledged for,
so there is absolutely no worry that you should be engaged in as far as that kind of thing.
Sometimes it takes a little bit of time because we're involved in so many different things,
but we always get everything out, and that will happen in this case too.
212-209-2950, two calls on the line.
Bernie, haven't heard from you in a while.
How are things down in Philadelphia?
Philly's great, but I've got to admit, the amount of content that this station provides is unprecedented,
as well as the premiums that we're offering.
The entire archive of all the Offerhook shows since 1988 until near present day is...
You're in the middle of 10,000 country hits commercial-free on the new Country 99.5.
New York City just got a little southern.
Bernie, I'm very sorry about that, but the country music just sort of overshadowed you,
and that's exactly what will happen if people don't call up.
Sorry, it just sort of...
Was that accidentally on purpose, Emmanuel?
It just happened.
They have a lot of force.
They have a lot of force behind them.
They have all this commercial backing.
Believe me, they would win in a fight.
They would, so let's not get into a fight with them.
212-209-2950, please pledge whatever you can afford.
I'm sorry, Bernie, go back to what you were saying.
Well, I'd like to think of the pen as muddier than the sword,
and the people that put out this radio station, WBAI-FM,
I have a lot of content on there, just not Offerhook,
but dozens of other really interesting programs.
Over 100 programs.
It's incredible how many people work here and put out good radio.
I find myself listening on all kinds of different times,
and everybody should try this.
Just turn on the radio.
Sometimes you'll hear things you don't like.
I certainly do, but lots of times you hear things
that really make you want to keep listening,
and I'm surprised by just the diversity that...
I'm surprised that I'm surprised, knowing this place,
and still learning all kinds of things by listening.
And people like to listen to stuff they don't like,
because it gets them fired up.
They like to shake their heads and disagree with that,
or call in and say, this is not right.
What's really not right is the very real possibility
that this station could become a commercial station
and no longer have the type of...
And you could call them to your blue in the face
and say, this is not right, but it wouldn't make any difference.
They wouldn't listen to you.
They wouldn't change anything.
In our particular case, we do listen.
When you call us and say, hey, that's not right,
I disagree with you, we can engage in a dialogue,
and that makes all the difference in the world.
Yeah, and that's a very good point.
Every single program on this station,
whether or not you agree with it,
it's something that will make you think.
And every single program on this station is done by people.
It's got a heart behind it.
It's got a soul behind it.
It's got a brain behind it that wants to bring you actual content
rather than telling you what kind of soda you should drink.
Absolutely, and believe me, that's something
that you will hear on this frequency repeatedly
is what kind of soda you should drink
and what kinds of products you should buy,
and that you're paying for as well.
You just don't get any choice in that.
You pay for every commercial that airs on every radio station
through whatever you pay to buy those things in the first place.
In our particular case, we don't have those commercials.
What we have is you calling up and pledging,
keeping the radio station going.
I'm not going to tell you what kind of soda I like.
Not only are we above commercial radio,
we're also above NPR, I think,
because even with NPR, it's all syndicated programs.
There's no locally produced programs.
Here, I'm sure we have a few syndicated programs.
There are some local programs on some NPR stations,
in fact, quite a few, but you're right.
A lot of it is satellite produced.
A lot of it is piped in.
Or just classical music.
When I was driving across Canada and across the U.S. a little while ago,
I had the satellite, the XM Sirius thing,
but listening to non-commercial radio, local radio,
that always was more interesting.
I always learned so much more and heard so much good music
and good talk and got involved.
Sometimes things that made me furious, listening,
but it was just cool hearing local voices.
Uh-oh.
Okay, false alarm. I thought the song was ending.
Was that a local voice?
That was not a local voice, for sure.
Emmanuel, you wondered earlier who would win in a fight,
the country music people or us.
Bringing the heartland to the heart of New York City.
Country music is back on the air in New York City.
On Country 99.5, we've rounded up 10,000 country hits
and we're playing them all in a row, commercial-free.
Toby Keese.
Mike, I think they kicked your ass here.
Yeah, seriously.
Well, especially with you at the controls.
I have no control over whether or not country music
comes to this radio station.
Our listeners have control over this.
But what I was going to say, in a fight of passion,
I think our listeners would win every time.
If you had commercial radio on the air,
you could not get people to call 212-209-2950
to keep it on the air.
You would need advertisers to force people to pay for it.
People power wins in the end, but do we have the people?
If we have the people, then we have the power.
So give us a call, 212-209-2950,
and show us that you're there.
Let's go over it one more time.
The pledge levels.
$25 gets you an off-the-hook t-shirt.
$75 gets you an off-the-hook t-shirt,
plus the 12 DVD set for Nauticon,
the hacker convention.
Look at that, four calls on the line.
That's what we were looking for.
All right, let's make sure all those calls get picked up.
And for a pledge of 125,
you'll get all 12...
Sorry, singing about Bibles and motorcycles
is very hard to concentrate.
But, you know, it's hard to concentrate
when you have this cacophony of sound in back of you,
and that's kind of what they want you to not be able to do,
is concentrate.
So, okay, a pledge of 125, you'll get the 12 DVD set,
you'll get the off-the-hook t-shirt,
and you'll get all the DVDs from off-the-hook itself.
You'll get every show from 1988 to 2008
in full stereo FM sound quality.
212-209-2950.
And, of course, if you think $125 is just not enough
for all those DVDs, you could always pledge more.
You could certainly pledge $250, $500, $1,000,
and get those premiums,
but also keep the station on the air.
Reduce the amount of time we have to spend
asking you to pledge.
212-209-2950.
And speaking of $1,000,
I have it on good authority
that the package we were offering last week,
the $1,000 ticket that got you overseas
to the Hacking at Random conference in Holland,
that has been taken,
so that's another $1,000 being added to our total tonight.
So help us break $2,000
by calling up, pledging whatever you can afford,
and we'll break the $2,000 level,
and that's good news for everybody.
So I think we're getting close,
but we do need a few more calls.
212-209-2950.
The country music is almost at an end.
I know people are very happy about that.
The song is really catchy.
But imagine us playing this on April 1st
for 20 minutes straight
without actually telling people what it was.
It was Bedlam.
It was Bedlam.
People were calling up and crying.
I mean, we didn't mean to do that to people,
but it was an important exercise
in what could be
if people don't wake up and realize
that certain things are precious,
need to be preserved.
All right, let's listen to the last few seconds
of the nightmare that could be.
212-209-2950.
Okay.
It's over.
We can relax now.
Yeah, that was something else, wasn't it?
Okay, hopefully that won't happen,
but we have three calls on the line now.
Let's get another three or four,
and I think we'll go over the top,
and then we'll be happy,
and we've done our best.
I want to thank all the people
who have called in and pledged so far.
Let's look at some email that we've gotten.
Dear Emanuel,
I mailed an anonymous contribution for WBAI
to you at the station on February 18th.
The check for $200 has not been deposited,
yet the other anonymous checks I sent at that point
were deposited.
I also sent another anonymous check on May 1st
for $200.
This guy or girl or woman or man or whatever
sends anonymous checks to a bunch of shows,
cuts the address off the check,
and writes on it,
don't worry, it'll clear,
and apparently they do,
and we want to thank that person
for sending in those mystery checks.
In answer to your question,
we got the one in May.
I know we got the one in May.
If the one in February hasn't been deposited,
then I don't think we got that one,
so I'm not sure what happened.
So you should probably void it or cancel it.
Yeah, for that one, I would,
but thanks very much.
Send another one.
Yeah, send another one, please.
But thanks, mystery friend,
for sending in those pledges.
It does make a difference,
a big difference.
Also, this rather important bit of mail that we got,
actually we got this today from a concerned parent,
and hopefully this is on the level.
Whether or not it is,
I think it's important enough for us to mention,
saying that her daughter ran away last Thursday.
She ran away to New York City
and her hacker friends,
I have no idea who they are
or where they live.
She listens to your program religiously.
Please broadcast to her
and tell her to come back
to her mother and big sister.
Her name is Michelle.
Michelle, if you're out there,
please contact your family
and make sure that they know you're okay.
And for whatever reason
you're not comfortable doing that,
contact us,
othat2600.com.
We'll be happy to help in whatever way we can.
But this kind of shows you
that there's a real human aspect to all of this
that we're always involved in.
And yeah, 212-209-2950
is our phone number
to show support for the show
and the radio station.
Now, Kevin, you're back.
How are things down in Talley?
Crazy.
Yeah?
Yeah? Okay.
Well, there's only two calls on the line now,
so it's not that crazy.
I understand we gave away the ticket overseas.
We did give away the ticket
and we want to thank Moose.
Moose?
For buying that ticket.
All right, Moose.
And you're going to be going over to Holland
and having a great time
with a whole bunch of the hackers on a plane.
A round trip.
That's going to be a blast.
There's going to be hackers and Moose on the plane.
Yeah, that's one way of saying it, I suppose.
212-209-2950.
If that's the total,
it's not as good as I hoped
because with the $1,000...
No, they're lagging behind.
Okay, they are.
All right.
Does that include the $1,000, though?
No.
That does not include the $1,000.
I saw $1,000 get added in.
Are you sure that doesn't include $1,000?
I'm pretty sure.
All right.
Well, we're at about $1,325,
and we need to be over $2,000.
So that means we're in a bit of trouble
if that does include the $1,000,
and I think it does.
212-209-2950.
We have a bunch of...
Actually, let's play something a little bit happier
that came out of Noticon
just to show you what the hacker spirit is all about.
This is included on the DVD,
so you'll get a few...
This is included.
This is actually a two-DVD section
of the 12-DVD set.
This has to do with that whole demo scene,
all the 8-bit music that gets played.
And here's an intro from our good friend Jason Scott
who was on the show last week
introing the contest that took place
late at night at Noticon.
It gives you an idea of the spirit.
Why, hello, everybody!
So...
We must thank you for being so patient
during the delay.
We wanted this to be really special.
We wanted it to be really good
and really give all the effort that's been put behind this
the best stage for it.
So that's what we've done.
We've just redone this whole place.
It took about 30 people, and it was great.
So a big thank you to everybody in the yellow shirts
who came out of nowhere to help us with that.
All right, so where you are at now
is Block Party 3 at Noticon 6.
And again, what this is,
this is part of the demo scene.
Congratulations, you're all in the demo scene.
The demo scene is the...
It's a demonstration of creativity,
of art, of skill, technical, artistic, music, everything.
We've got it all tonight.
We're gonna be really ambitious tonight,
so please be patient with us.
We have now six, seven, eight different machines here,
some of them handmade, some of them years old,
some of them the newest,
including our Demo Compo machine,
which we are giving away to the winner of the Demo Compo.
So here's how this works.
We have a number of events,
ranging with names like Wild Card,
Old Music, Music, Demo, and so on.
One slight change,
we didn't have enough entries this year for Old School Demo,
so they are part of Wild Card.
But we'll point them out anyway to you so you know.
We really appreciate that.
We're trying something new,
and the new thing was,
I got tired of things being called Old School
when it was just being run on modern hardware.
So I said, if you're gonna be in the Old School competition,
you gotta haul an old piece of crap from your basement.
So people worked really hard,
brought them over, and made it work.
And I'm really proud of them for trying it.
Now, the way this works is,
you watch these things, it's good to take notes,
and we have handed you vote keys.
The vote keys are used by going to
vote.demoparty.us after the competitions,
and you put in your vote key,
and you indicate whether something is negative one,
sucks, or five, rules.
And from that, we will determine the winners
to be announced tomorrow.
So, we are now going to go through this.
Now bear in mind that for some of these,
and I'll warn you, we have to set up the machines
to go up into the projector.
We're trying to do the maximum amount of visual
and audio for each one.
So we're implementing cameras,
and we're implementing all sorts of bizarre
S-video composite, you name it,
to make them come up.
So, before we begin,
I understand some of you will drift in and out,
but be aware, all of this
is the work of hundreds of hours,
of dozens of people
to bring this for you tonight.
And thanks to all of them,
because when we're done with this,
it's going to be late,
but I want to say when we're all awake,
thank you guys so much for coming through
again this year for us.
Okay, I've got to break in here,
because we're running short on time.
We can actually hear some of the music
that takes place.
Skipping ahead onto the DVD here.
There we go.
This is what some of the 8-bit music sounds like
as part of the demo competition at Nauticon.
You'll get to see the visuals as well.
It's really a lot of fun.
You've seen it, right, Mike?
I didn't see it this year,
but I've seen it in the past,
and it's really cool,
and of course you need the video,
which you'll get if you pledge.
That's for a pledge of $75.
Again, pledge of $25 gets you the t-shirt,
the Off the Hook t-shirt.
Pledge of $125 gets you all of that,
plus the Off the Hook complete set
of high-fidelity radio shows
from 1988 to 2008.
Rob?
And I'd just like to remind our listeners
that you can only get our premiums during our show,
so I know a lot of you like to wait until the last minute.
This is it. This is the last minute.
Yes, we're at $1525.
We need another $475 in the next four minutes.
Help keep this frequency from turning into country
or something worse,
because it can happen. It can happen any day.
And I don't mean to scare people.
I'm not trying to do that,
but it is a reality that
non-commercial radio stations
don't survive because of the economy,
because of the expenses.
That's why we need our listeners.
We lose our listeners, we lose our support,
we lose everything, and that's what you are to us,
everything. Please, give a call in the next four minutes.
Make sure that we get above that $2000 mark.
212-209-2950.
Do you know $2000,
which is what we're trying to get for this whole hour?
That's basically 30 seconds of commercial time
on one of those commercial stations.
We have a commercial frequency.
We could easily sell that frequency,
make a ton of money,
and then they'd make a ton of money.
That's not what we're about.
And please, voice your support
for us continuing not to be about that.
All right, we're out of here.
Welcome to Personal Computer Show. They're coming up next.
Please, keep the phone lines ringing.
212-209-2950.
We'll be back,
hopefully, next week.
Have a good night.
Prison wall
And though I break away
to meet you
anyhow
I have to say
please remember
when you call
If a woman
answers
Hang up the phone
Don't take a chance
Please don't ask
for me
If a woman
answers
Hang up the phone
I love you
but darling
I'm not free
The chains that bind
this heart of mine
may never break
but they can't
stop my heart
from wanting you
I know that I
should say don't call
for both our sakes
but I can't
so remember
when you do
If a woman
answers
Hang up the phone
Don't take a chance
Please don't ask
for me
If a woman
answers
Hang up the phone
I love you
but darling
I'm not free