When Charlie asked me if I wanted to help him start a radio station, I initially said no. I thought he was crazy. I thought there was no way it could happen. I thought he’d get tired of the idea after a month, let it go, and I’d never hear about it ever again.

Boy, was I ever wrong.

The minute I agreed to help him out, he was in action, building web pages, finding us a stream host, figuring out what it would cost, where we’d get the money, and how we’d do everything. “You be the station manager,” he said, “you get the DJs, and I’ll get us set up. It’ll be great, you’ll see!”

He’ll get bored soon, I thought, and then I won’t have to do this at all.

Wrong again.

People started asking to be DJs, and we started actively recruiting them. Loco, Vorac, Baffo, Crypto, and Rasta were among our early lineup…and they’re still here, joined by newer DJs like Zim, Dark, Jer, MickeyG, and now Apollyon!

Charlie built us an AutoDJ to take over when a live DJ was not on the air. DJ JohnnyFever has evolved from simply playing a random playlist to actively playing requests and choosing songs from popularly requested genres. He has gained a personality, become a part of what makes KJSR unique, and even gained a job interviewing the DJs in his mellow mechanical voice.

At this point, we’re a few months in. Charlie is still not bored, I am settling into my role as station manager, and everything’s rolling along perfectly great…and I realize KJSR has become something beyond what I ever imagined.

Despite the problems we’ve faced in the last 126 days-that’s right, we’ve been on the air since August 29^th, 2008, and I can count!-we are still here. We’ve dealt with hackers, problems with people trying to “boycott” the station, people trying to buy us and Johnny and the DJs and the site, personal problems between DJs or between DJs and the staff. Our server has been on fire-literally! This site has crashed a few times, and it always comes back. It has problems and they always get solved. We are STILL here!

I would like to thank, first of all, our listeners, without whom we would never have made it this far. If it weren’t for you there would be no KJSR.net as we know it now. Next, the DJs, all of whom have made a significant impact on shaping KJSR in some way-Vorac, Rasta, Overdose, Loco, Baffo, Crypto, Abrahms, Korith, Dark, Zim, Flip, Myotis, Jer, MickeyG, and Apollyon. If you don’t think you’ve made an impact, I can assure you, you are wrong. Lastly, I need to thank Charlie-he created the idea, the name, and the website, and without his guiding hand and the blood, sweat, and tears he puts into making sure each and every DJ has their software properly set up and each and every webpage is properly running, without the ideas he comes up with and the knowledge he puts into making them happen, we would have crashed and burned a long time ago. Thank you all, from the bottom of my heart.

What are we planning to bring you in 2009? Well, for one thing, we’re going to work hard to improve our DJ-listener interface as much as possible. We want to find newer and better ways for DJ and listeners to communicate, so that we can bring you as much quality content as possible. We’re going to cover more events than ever before, and include more specialty segments, such as Behind the Mic. My personal “pet project” resolutions are getting the KJSR Fan Club off the ground with a monthly newsletter (if anyone wants to contribute, let me know at dj-kyo@kjsr.net; all kinds of content from both DJs and listeners is welcome!) and perhaps finding us some really great prizes to give away. I’m talking about t-shirts, mouse pads, maybe hats, and who knows what else? We’re going to (try) to get coverage for events like meet and greets in different parts of the country and, of course, Herocon 2009. We’re going to try to improve our listenership, not because it is important to us to have more listeners but because we believe that the number of listeners we can count on a daily basis will show us if we are improving as we should be. We’re planning a lot of things, and if I told you all of them here, well, there’d be no surprises, would there?

Again, thank you all for supporting KJSR.net and making it something I never thought it would become. Remember, if there’s anything we can do for you in return, let us know-the Voice of Jello Shooters is your voice, too!

DJ Kyo

KJSR.net Station Manager