Zoot Radio

Several years ago a friend of mine introduced me to Old Time Radio. The old radio broadcasts of “The Shadow” and “Jack Benny” were great and I started collecting them.  Well, now I have over 25,000 radio episodes from about 220 different radio series. So in 2003 or 2004, I don’t exactly remember, I set up an Old Time Radio Show website where people could download the shows. Since they were public domain and nobody really owns them I just gave them away.

Now, a lot of you out there are probably thinking, “GAVE THEM AWAY! WHAT AN IDIOT!!!”

There are other websites around that sell Old Time Radio shows and they don’t make that much money. Besides, I’m trying to keep the art of Radio Drama alive and kicking and those sites are choking it to death. My main downloaders are old and trying to relive some happy times of their youth and childhood. I used to get emails from nursing homes telling me how great the shows were for therapy with non-responsive patients. So I was just practicing “Good Kharma” by giving them away.

Anyway, I had to take it down because it did start to cost money, I had it on its own dedicated server, and I was just burning out on all of the projects I had going on. But, little by little, I got the bug to put it back up. People kept emailing, trying to talk me into doing it again, and when the domain came up for renewal a lot of people tried to snag it.

So, with technology being the way it is and driving down prices; and my knowledge base increasing so that I can better handle all the responsibilities involved in running the site, I slowly started to rebuild a new website.

I re-launched Zoot Radio today and if you like Old Time Radio you can check it out at http://zootradio.com

Enjoy.