As Global Community Radio celebrates its first anniversary on the air, we continue to strive to bring our partner stations and our listeners the highest quality programming available.
To that end, we've made several changes to both GCR1 and GCR2 programming schedules to attempt to better satisfy the wants and needs of both our partner stations and our listeners.
On GCR1, we've made changes weekdays at 2 AM Eastern. We will continue to air DW's Africa Link Tuesday thru Saturday at 2. This will now be followed at 2:30 by two outstanding documentary series' from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). Earshot will air Tuesday thru Friday, while Pocket Docs, a weekly half hour program presenting several short documentaries and monologues, will air on Saturdays at 2:30 AM Eastern.
On Mondays at 2 AM Eastern, we are replacing the repeat of DW's Inside Europe with two programs. At 2 AM, it's The Link, a weekly broadcast from Radio Canada International, followed at 2:30 by the weekly program from Radio Sweden. You can still hear Inside Europe on Saturdays at Noon Eastern on GCR1.
Even more changes have come to early Saturday mornings on GCR1. We've decided to replace our WRN programming on Saturdays with more diverse programming that we think you will enjoy.
During the 1 AM hour on Saturdays, we are pleased to add two new programs from DW. These are actually shows from DW Television, but we feel both translate well to an audio only medium. At 1:05, after VOA headlines, we now present Quadriga. This is a weekly roundtable where some of the week's hot news issues are discussed and debated. at 1:30, we offer you Conflict Zone, a weekly one on one interview about a controversial issue. Later on, we present two new programs from the ABC in Australia. At 3:05, you can now hear Counterpoint, a weekly program offering insights and perspectives on a wide range of topics. At 4:05, we present Awaye!, a weekly series highlighting aboriginal and indigenous culture from across Australia and from around the world. Last, but certainly not least, at 5 AM Eastern, we are pleased to add Dialogos Radio to our schedule. Dialogos Radio offers interviews, commentaries, and music, with an emphasis on Greek culture.
Our relays of international public broadcasters continue unchanged Monday thru Friday overnights.
On Saturdays at 10 PM Eastern, we've replace the Adam Ritz Show (due to a lack of new shows for several weeks) with another ABC (Australia) production, The Final Cut, which we feel compliments our other film and entertainment related programs on Saturday nights.
We've made several changes to the GCR2 stream as well. The Radio Thrift Shop; has cut back to sporadic production. We may consider adding it back to our schedule at some point, but, we have chosen to add a new show to our lineup. On Monday night/Tuesday morning at Midnight Eastern, we are pleased to announce the debut of Radio Serena. This is a show offering a wide variety of music, with an emphasis on mixing 90s hits, golden Oldies, and other musical genres in a mix that is a combination of carefully programmed radio with some of the randomness of freeform community radio. This new show is the creation of Serena, or The Radio Kid, co-host of Clearing the Static, and host of The Radio Kid's Rant, both heard on GCR1. Pemberton's Basement now moves to start at 1:00 AM Eastern on GCR2.
A minor change to our Friday Classical programming. We will now alternate two live concert series on Fridays at 8 AM Eastern. We are now airing Concerts From the Library of Congress. Later this year, probably starting in June, we will again air Center Stage From Wolf Trap, and its brand new season of live concert broadcasts.
We've made a few changes to our Jazz program lineup on weekdays. We haven't dropped any Jazz shows, but we shifted the times of some of the shows so that our partner stations can carry shows in their entirety, and not partial programs, and, also, so that the programming will "flow" a bit better.
On Tuesdays, we have swapped time slots for The Jazz Scene and Jazz for the Asking, so that both of Jake Longwell's Jazz programs will now run back to back. On Thursdays, we have shifted Sound Ideas to start at 2 PM Eastern, with Cool Jazz Set at 3, and Gifts and Messages at 5 PM Eastern. Our Friday standards oriented Jazz programming now starts with Anything Goes! With Lise Avery at 2 PM, Radio Deluxe at 3, and Dick Robinson's American Standards by the Sea staying put at 5 PM Eastern.
We have made/will be making changes to our Folk/Acoustic programming as well.
We are looking for a new two hour Folk music program to run on Mondays at 10 AM Eastern. This will replace Folk Scene. This long running program has ceased production, after the passing of its longtime host, Roz Larman. We deeply regret her passing, and we have been honored to air Folk Scene for so many years, as far back as when GCR stook for Geneva Community Radio. We will air reruns of Folk Scene for now, until we find another suitable Folk music show. We would welcome suggestions from any of our partner stations and/or listeners.
On Fridays, some definite changes are being made to our Bluegrass oriented programming. We regret that we had to discontinue our airing of The Bluegrass Review. This is due to the fact that the program is no longer a free to air program. We do not have the funds needed to purchase programming at this time. We wish Phil Nusbaum the best as Bluegrass Review moves forward in 2017. We are shifting Music for the Mountain Bluegrass to start at 10 AM Eastern. Ray Ulan's Bluegrass Experiment is cutting back to a one hour program instead of two hours. This show will now run at 11 AM Eastern. At Noon, we are adding Woodwarbler's Jazzgrass Radio Show. This two hour program offers an interesting mix of Bluegrass and Jazz. We feel this will make for an interesting buffer between our Bluegrass and Jazz programs on Fridays. We hope you will agree.
Our Saturday programming has changes coming to it as well. We are swapping Paul Peters' The Pirate Years, and Kim Clark's 60's pop music show Dig!. Dig! will now run Saturdays at Noon Eastern, with Pirate Years airing Wednesday nights at 10 PM Eastern. We are adding a new Rock show at 4 PM Eastern called Geezer Rock. This program offers new tracks from iconic rock and roll artists. You're not likely to hear these new tracks on your typical Classic Rock radio station. This will shift Saving the 70s, Motown Memories, Spectrum and Upfront Soul to each start one hour later. For now, the weekly Blues FM program is on hiatus due to some health issues experienced by the host, Left Enright. We wish him a speedy recovery, and will do what we can to return the series to our Blues programming when new shows become available.
As you can see, there are a lot of changes here! As always, we want feedback from our partner stations and our listeners. Tell us what you think! E-mail us at globalcommunityradio@gmail.com with your thoughts on how we can better improve our programming.
All the best,
Jason Longwell
GCR Station Manager
