Um, Sorry. Now What?

I probably should remember not to trust my instincts, because they so very rarely turn out to be correct. Hard data's often hard to come by, and often, you're unaware of it until it smashes you in the head.

And so it was with Altrok's goodbye message yesterday. It could be read as blaming you for the station's failure, and that's not true. Please consider this an apology.

Truth is, Altrok was as good as it could be, given my limitations on doing what really needed to be done to make it viable. As the work of a hobbyist, it was stellar; when compared to a professional operation it was feeble. The music was always good, but all the fit and finish details around that were stale and getting staler, and we had no way to make sure it stayed fresh.

Strangely, the situation's a lot like the recent news about Bear Stearns, the huge bank that suddenly collapsed within a few hours last Sunday.

Also, it was always in a precarious position in terms of my scraping together the time necessary to keep it going and, in a Bear Stearns-like scenario, I looked into my reserves of goodwill - the only currency that was keeping Altrok afloat - on Wednesday and found them empty. A collapse quickly followed.

Continuing that metaphor, Bear Stearns would have been in a much better position if people had just paid their mortgages on time - but given that they had made sure their portfolio was full of people who weren't likely to do that, they bear the brunt of the responsibility (and of the result.) I was basing my success on something that I couldn't possibly count on, and the same downfall applied.

Should people pay their mortgages? Sure - unless they got suckered into procuring a bad one. Should people click on the ads at AltrokRadio.com? Sure - unless they don't quite get that ads pay for the service.

So I kind of failed in communicating the way I did; let me be clear that the failure is really due to my ineptitude, rather than your lack of commitment. I was committed all along, of course, but just to doing it wrong.

If I find a way to do it correctly, with some level of confidence, I could be back on the air with it, or at least with something like it. But first I have to figure out what lessons to learn from the high volumes of failure I've generated thus far. One good thing is that this did force a bit of a logjam break on one of the big constrictions I had - the one where a hobby shouldn't have the impact on my family that it had. It's now been redefined as something that'll take sacrifice to achieve, and everybody's pretty much okay with that. (Guess they also got tired of me glumly pacing around the house.)

That said, it's not as easy as plugging things back in and flicking the switch, because I really do have to figure out what was so dissatisfying about the original endeavor.

But I really hate having turned it off, and I really want to turn it back on. And, at least, I don't have to find a new transmitter.