The popular discussion board, which was started in the mid-1990s has been terminated by its current owners, Streamline Digital. It seems that the site was not making any money and thus the plug was pulled.
There are other engineering-type discussion boards such as The Virtual Engineer and… Hmm, Anybody?
Where a vacuum exists, nature abhors it. The question is, will anyone step up and fill the void?
Apparently this shutdown wasn’t entirely unexpected. I read on another forum that several of the original founders of Radio-Info (the predecessor to RadioDiscussion) created another radio forum called RadioInsight Community. I notice that the RadioInsight Community site mentions a “sudden influx of users” so apparently some people are making the switch.
I think Streamline / RadioInk shot themselves in the foot. A giant misstep was instead of simply upgrading the forum platform the boards had been using they decided to migrate to a different platform which they had to outlay capital for. The problems with migrating the users over lead to many of them becoming frustrated and not coming back. Adding insult to injury was the horrendous color theme that made it difficult to read.
Simply put, they ran it into the ground and Doug is probably rolling in his grave to see how his mission was trashed and now buried into the deep of internet past.
I’d be willing to setup and host a forum for radio-related stuff on my domain if there’s enough demand. Anyone know how many people would be interested?
I’ve spent the last three months at radio-talk.com’s forum (http://www.radio-talk.net/forum/index.php) where I’ve been warmly welcomed. A guy named bturner’s posts about how LPFMs fare financially are especially insightful to a new applicant like me.
Yeesh. That’s Radio-Talk.NET. And sorry about the duplicate posts.
Sharon,
I am a long time radio guy with an LPFM application, and I have corresponded with Bill Turner on occasion.
He has been in radio a while and knows his stuff. His insights are excellent.
Alan
The radio insight forum is run by Lance Venta who was behind the original radio-info. Scott Fybush is also involved with it.
broadcastengineering.info (the Virtual Engineer) forum is run by Chris Tarr, and Kent Winrich. I am the senior moderator there, and co-admin with Chris and Kent. True story, the engineering forum on radio-info.com came about long long ago, after a discussion I had with Lance that mentioned there should be a sub forum for broadcast engineering. He liked the idea enough to put in a engineering forum on the original radio-info. Over 10 years ago now.
Everyone is also welcome to join yourmidwestmedia.net. While the name has a mid west focus, there are boards for each region and many individual states. We will add more as the demand is there. Also, many radio topics and off-topic boards too. Stop by and say hi.
I knew it was a dollars & cents thing. Free boards rely on ad revenue to keep them going.
We’ve got quite a little LPFM community going here. Anyone gotten their CP yet?
radio-talk.net seems perfect, given the LPFM forum, but over the last 30 minutes I cannot convince it to let me register.
Radio Insight has a LPFM section too…
http://radioinsight.com/community/board/general/lpf/
Me either…glad to know I’m not the only one. Doesn’t seem to be an easy way to report problems registering either.
Radiodiscussions.com is back up and running. No explanation as to why it was down.
It is? The 404 page has been replaced by a “RadioDiscussions.com is Ceasing Operation” page.
For a few minutes on the afternoon of 11 Dec, about 5 PM CST, the website was up,
and had 10 NEW posts dated as today, all moderator buzz stream suggestions,
entered at 4:38 PM. I was logged in immediately on old cookies and recognized, but had no
posting privs.
It did respond exactly as the old website with same boards, etc…
even remembered my newly selected lower-contrast screen setting.
On the main pg was an option to become a premium subscriber….I think the min oprion was a 14.95/mo or something.
I suspect the site will relaunch, with ads/subscription.
Maybe I saw a test run while it was live briefly.
Makes me pi$$ed off. You may have known me by this username for over 5 years now. All of my FM and AM DX logs and classic TV listings were on there, as well as many posts in the Seattle/Tacoma boards. All of those posts now completely gone. I had well over 5000 posts there (I think it was around 5,800 when I last checked on 12/02) and if I have to pay $15 a month to write my AM and FM DX logs, it’s not happening. Thank you Tom Wells and tell all of my DXers (radioman148, cyberdad, gar fla etc.) hi for me and I miss talking to them on Radio Discussions!
-crainbebo
@crainbebo: You can always look at the last snapshots of the site via the Wayback Machine at archive.org
@Tom Wells: I wonder about the potential success (failure) of such a subscription model. If I’m not mistaken I thought Keith Hammond’s site had tried it and enjoyed limited success. I believe Scott Fybush does that with his Northeast Radio Watch (which I tried to subscribe to but had difficulty and just gave up). I think Streamline had an excellent way to “crowd source” radio news from those actually involved in the broadcasting but they ran it into the ground. Many of those who followed it for recreation will likely not subscribe. As far as I’m concerned I’m over it and won’t look back.
They talk about not generating revenue as the reason for the shutdown. With my HobbyBroadcaster.net site it costs me money not only to keep the site and forums up but for the test equipment I invested in to review Part 15 transmitters and associated gear. If I were doing this to make a profit it would have never been launched if you consider it’s such a niche interest. Even if Streamline relaunched RD you might as well put a fork in it, it’s done!
If anyone here has a need to host a site related to broadcasting,I have hosting space available from a small vim to multiple dedicated severs. I run a small ISP , we have loads of excess upstream bandwidth just sitting idle. I would rather host a site on my dime than see it go dark. We have the facilities, actual costs are near nothing.
Stephen *at* newbreakcommunications dot com
We have not ever tried a subscription-based site. It always has been and always will be free. We have (now) reduced the sign-up and login security. The reason it was so tight (believe it or not) was due to many of our members mysteriously being banned (for no reason) on R-I / R-D right after signing on with us as members. Those people absolutely hated us and any person who came to our site and we have most of the movers and shakers in the industry as members. The security was overdone but, it was as a means of protecting our members. I guess we don’t have to worry about that, now.
I’ve been a member at broadcastengineering.info for a couple years, and it’s very informative, and I can occasionally contribute something helpful, and they’re relatively tolerant of the fact that I’m not *actually* a broadcast engineer. 🙂